Time for an information diet

Date: 2008.11.08 | Category: General | Tags:

Now that the election is over, it seems like the perfect time to start a low-information diet. The term comes, as far as I know, from the book Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Ferriss himself comes off as a bit of a huckster and charlatan (e.g., he supports himself by selling nutritional supplements), but the book has a number of interesting ideas, of which this is one.

You can download a summary of the idea here, although I thought that this provides a better description.

The basic idea is to eliminate all unnecessary reading (I’m looking at you, Google Reader) and media consumption for a week, batch and limit access to email, and then look at what’s worthwhile and what’s not.

I’ve been spending far too much time watching the twists and turns of fairly trivial events, because they were and are important on a larger time scale. Time to pull back and get some work done, and this is not a bad part of that more balanced intellectual diet.