“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
– Herbert A. Simon
Most mornings, before I write anything or settle into the day, I have to decide how much of the internet I am going to let into my head.
That sounds a little dramatic, but it is the practical question. Every day brings a pile of things that might be worth my attention: some useful, some interesting, some merely loud, and some that only felt important because I saw them at the wrong moment.
The hard part is not finding information. The hard part is deciding what deserves attention, what can be skimmed, what should be saved, and what should be ignored without guilt.
I do not think the goal is to consume more. I think the goal is to consume less randomly.
What Used To Be Here
Notice something different? The original version of this post was about how I processed 12,853 articles, forum topics, and blog posts in a week using Google Reader, Delicious, keyboard shortcuts, and a very 2008 set of tools. I have updated it to reflect how I think about reading, filtering, and attention now.
Start with time.
If I do not decide how much time online reading deserves, the internet will happily take the rest.
So the first question is blunt: how much of my day do I actually want to give to intake?
Not writing. Not thinking. Not building. Not talking to people. Just intake.
There are seasons where I want a lot of input. I am learning a new area, researching a decision, following a fast-moving topic, or trying to understand what people are noticing. In those moments, more reading is not avoidance. It is part of the job.
Without a boundary, though, reading turns into a very respectable way to avoid choosing what I am going to do with what I already know.
The move is to separate jobs that should never have been collapsed:
Those are not the same activity.
Scan. Choose. Read. Save. Respond.
Triage should be fast. Title, source, summary, maybe the first paragraph. Is this relevant? Is it timely? Is it likely to change something I think, decide, or do? If not, it can go.
Reading is slower. That is where I am actually letting someone else’s argument into my head and giving it enough attention to see whether it holds together.
Saving is different again. Sometimes I do not need to read the whole thing right now. I just need to know it exists, tag it well enough that future-me can find it, and move on.
Responding is its own thing. Commenting, replying, forwarding, posting, debating, adding my view to the pile. That can be valuable, but it is not the same as reading. It uses a different kind of attention.
When I mix all of those together, I get slow and reactive. I open something, half-read it, click a link, skim another post, save the first one badly, start typing a reply, remember I was supposed to be doing something else, and somehow call the whole thing “research.”
A cleaner process makes each pass cleaner.
Most things I encounter online do not deserve a full read from me.
That is not an insult to the writer. It is just math, and pretending otherwise is how I lose an afternoon.
Some things are interesting but not useful. Some are useful but not useful right now. Some repeat an idea I already understand. Some are worth saving as a reference but not worth reading end to end. Some are mostly news, which means they feel urgent for an hour and then vanish from my life completely.
I try to be ruthless with this. If I get a few paragraphs in and realize the piece is not going anywhere I need to follow, I stop. If the headline looks vaguely interesting but not important, I save it for a second pass. If it still does not feel worth reading later, I let it go.
That second pass matters. A surprising amount of “I should read this” fades if I give it a little time.
The first impulse is often curiosity. The second pass is judgment.
Batching helped because switching modes has a cost.
If I am processing new items, I want to stay in that mode: scan, decide, skip, save, move on. If I am reading, I want to read. If I am replying, I want to reply. If I am organizing references, I want to do that deliberately.
Almost every modern reading tool mixes signal and noise together. My attention works better when I decide what kind of work I am doing inside that stream.
The tool wants to present everything as one stream. I do not have to accept that as my process.
I do not always succeed at this. There are plenty of days where I click around too much, skim without retaining anything, or open a pile of tabs that mostly become browser furniture. But when I am at my best, I am usually not asking, “What is the next interesting thing?”
I am asking, “What mode am I in right now?”
Tools matter when they reduce friction around the right decision.
The specifics change. Sometimes the useful thing is a fast keyboard shortcut. Sometimes it is a read-later queue, a bookmark folder, a search system, or a plain note where I can put something without letting it hijack the present.
The specific tool matters less than the job it is doing.
For me, the useful questions are:
If a tool helps with those, it is useful. If it mostly gives me a more elaborate place to avoid deciding, it is just a nicer-looking pile.
Attention needs a system around it.
Without one, every incoming item gets to make its own case in the moment. The interesting headline wins. The loud thread wins. The tab I already opened wins. The thing that is easiest to keep skimming wins.
A simple process changes that. Not perfectly, but enough.
It lets me say: this is noise, this is worth a skim, this deserves a real read, this should be saved, this is worth responding to, and this can be ignored.
That last category is underrated.
There is too much internet to read. There always was. The useful skill is not keeping up with all of it. The useful skill is building enough of a filter that the things I read have a chance to matter.
]]>Are some of the things we do to save money… really just wasting our time?
Here’s a simple example – something I did one time when I was also doing a time log.
For a couple months I wrote down how long it took to fill up my car at two different gas stations – and today, I want to show you my results.
I tracked how long it took me to fill up my car at
I also tracked how much the gas costs, and the difference is pretty consistently about 4% (exact numbers below)
Here is what I found:
Data and Calculations:
Let’s assume that the only extra time is the time spent waiting in line. Since I am paying with post-tax dollars, I will consider the amount of pre-tax dollars I need to earn for the difference in price as well. I’ll go with a marginal tax rate of about 30%. For $2.84 saved per trip:
How about those with SUVs and Minivans?
SUVs and Minivans:
Depending on who you are, it may or may not be worth it.
In my case, I’m not really saving any money – if I sit in a long line to save a few cents on gas, I’m just wasting my time.
Now, I’ve used gas in this article as an example – but the truth is, this is more than just about gas.
This is about a mindset of analyzing where your time really goes. I no longer worry about saving money on gas, because I’m looking at how much it costs me in time.
Once I started thinking like this, it’s what led me to some other interesting experiments in my life where I began trading money for more time.
And if you haven’t started it already, I encourage you to see where your time goes – do a time log.
Track everything – and maybe you’ll find your own example of something where saving money is more expensive than you think!
]]>For $60 I managed to free up 10 hours every week!
Imagine what you could do with just one of your long term goals with 10 hours a week.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain to you not just how I freed up 10 hours a week – but also the thought process for how I got here
To find out where my time was going, I painstaking logged everything I did for a month – from the time I woke up, to the time I went to bed.
And I discovered I was spending lots of time:
All told, these tasks took anywhere from 9-15 hours a week, for an average of 12 hours a week.
That was simply too much time. Sometimes I do enjoy cooking or getting take out – but wouldn’t it be nice to not have to do it every week?
I thought through a few different alternatives:
I decided on option 3: hire someone to cook for me.. My reasoning was hopefully I could find someone who would come to my home to cook, and could even do dishes, laundry, and other general chores.
Having chosen my plan of action, I went to Craig’s List and researched full time chef/cooking jobs.
I learned the average wages paid were $9-14 an hour.
Based on this, I decided I would hire someone twice a week for 2 hours at a time, and pay $15 an hour, plus costs for ingredients. I posted an ad detailing the position on Thursday night, fell asleep and expected to wake up with a handful of applicants.
After all, how many prospective cooks could there be who needed a few hours of sporadic work each week?
Well, it turns out .. quite a few!
When I woke up I had over 30 emails already.
By the time I finally took the ad down (posted in “gigs”) later that weekend, I had received over 70 applicants.
I was stunned.
After corresponding back and forth with a few of them over the weekend, I finally settled on one who I’ll call “Casey”.
Casey proposed that she would cook additional food at home when she was preparing meals for her family and bring them by my apartment twice a week.
I no longer cared about the dishes or other chores – if she was able to cook at home and deliver the food directly, that was even better!
She suggested a menu with various healthy meals she would prepare for the first couple weeks, and was flexible on the drop off time to meet my schedule.
Casey was organized, and clearly understood exactly what I was looking for: simplifying my life. We had a winner!
This was a fantastic experiment. Outsourcing experiments don’t always work out – but this one certainly did. Just a handful of the benefits included:
The bottom line – outsourcing doesn’t always have to be complicated, work related, or involve international virtual assistants. Hiring locally for personal outsourcing can pay off as well – and free up time to do things you love.
]]>“A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow.”
George PattonYou may be familiar with this old Abraham Lincoln quote: “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”
For many people, that is a life-changing idea. A little preparation can save hours of wasted motion.
Preparation has a shadow side.
But preparation has a shadow side. If you keep sharpening the axe because chopping the tree feels uncomfortable, preparation has quietly become procrastination.
Metawork is work about the work. It is planning, reading, researching, outlining, organizing, tool-shopping, and setting up systems.
Done well, metawork is valuable. It helps you see the path before you start walking. It can make the next hundred hours more effective.
But metawork is not the result. It is only useful if it leads to action.
At some point, the plan has to become a draft. The research has to become a decision. The system has to become a habit. The preparation has to turn into the thing you were preparing to do.
Consider someone who wants to get healthier by exercising.
Choosing a gym, comparing workout plans, reading about cardio versus strength training, and deciding which exercises to do on which days can all be useful.
But none of it makes you stronger by itself. At some point, you have to exercise.
| Productive Action | Metawork |
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The tricky thing is that metawork feels responsible. It gives you the emotional reward of being productive without the risk of producing something imperfect.
That is why it can be so seductive. Planning rarely exposes you. Doing does.
If there is a goal you have been preparing for forever, ask yourself a simple question: what would count as direct progress today?
Not more research. Not a better tool. Not a cleaner system. Actual movement.
Prepare enough to begin. Then begin.
]]>25% of New Year’s resolutions are broken in the first week alone.
Within 6 months, over half of New Year Resolvers will have given up.
Why?
Why is it that so many resolutions are doomed from the start?
Here’s one major reason I’ve found with clients:
You need to learn how to balance these new resolutions with your prior commitments.
Resolutions usually involve new commitments.
The problem is: you’re already busy.
Imagine this: if on December 31st, you were already living a life where every moment of the day was filled with something – how can you do everything you’ve always done, and squeeze in time for new things on January 1?
So the change isn’t just starting new resolutions …
You also need to take this opportunity to sharpen your focus, and give up on a few things.
The answer is:
Commit to doing less of some things: so you can do the important things better.
The simplest way I’ve found of letting go is to actively decide what I will work on right now – and what I’m going to let fall to “maybe” in my life.
How? You make two lists:
Very briefly, the Someday list is my list of items that I intend to get to “Someday.”
So working out may be something that is on my Todo list right now, because I know I am going to do that today and throughout this week.
On the other hand, some books I am planning to write are sitting on the “Someday” lis.
They are projects I would like to work on, but they are not important enough to me to make it on my Todo list right now….
And maybe they never will.
Every week or two, I review the items on that list.
If I decide I am ready to begin a project that week… I move it from Someday into my normal Todo List.
I can hear the question now…
If it’s on your Someday list and it never gets done, what’s the point?
If you don’t explicitly decide what is on your Someday list, you implicitly put everything you aren’t actively working on on it.
If you don’t actively take action on it then you are already letting it be pushed off into the future – by the day-to-day things that come up and happen.
And truthfully – some of those “emergencies” don’t need to be dealt with today – or sometimes ever.
Save those low-value, time-consuming tasks for “Someday” – and make today a day that matters to you.
Don’t be a statistic – don’t be one of the 25% who gives up this first week! There’s still time to turn it around.
And don’t worry if you don’t feel this moment, or this year, or this week, or this situation isn’t “exactly right.”
You don’t need “exactly right” on the outside to make a change – you just need to take action, right now.
]]>“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev