Right now, in my path of exploration, I was hit by information overload. I am glad that I was able to identify it and put a full stop to that.
What is Information Overload?
I realized that while I'm trying to learn something new, I tend to research about it on different platforms like YouTube, blogs, developer documents, etc. There's valuable content on each one of them. Now, once I stumble upon an article, it leads me to other contents on the same blog. Within each article, there's "References" section which again leads me to another place. One thing leads to another and there's an endless loop of consumption. So, how do you end this consumption and transform it to creation?
My takeaways from the experience:
- Don't seek content, but go through the content that comes to you :
If you're looking for something new, stop looking for the perfect content and just kickstart with the bare minimum understanding from your source of inspiration. Do, not watch :
Once the content comes to you, don't read and dismiss. But, try and implement it by creating your own use case or implementation. A content read is only an information and will be forgotten sooner or later. It becomes my own only on application. Finding one average information and transforming it into your own application is better than going through 100 videos.
Share :
Share your implementation along with a gratitude to the inspiration of your content. People are more than happy to see their content being applied by somebody else. It motivates them to create more content. Of course, I don't mean Copy+Paste. I mean "Your Version" of implementation.
Interact :
Reach out and build connections. Be happy when you're appreciated for your work. But don't be obsessed with an appreciation or a shout-out. Don't make it the reason for your interactions. Do, because you want to do it, not because you need to.
You need not know it all, coz you never will :
When you stumble upon a nice repo of content, stop your urge to go through the beginning of the series with a mindset that "This is a valuable content and I should go through all of them , starting from the 1st video". Understand that the videos have been there for long and if you didn't find it useful yesterday, may be you didn't need it then. Read what you find interesting today and rest assured to stumble upon something interesting tomorrow. Of course, you can bookmark the link that you found useful and come back to it on one of those days when you don't know what to explore next. But, if your list of exploration already has 3 items, dismiss a new thing.
Maintain your curiosity list :
Make a list of what you're going to explore this week or the coming 3 days. If you stumble upon anything apart from those within the current week, add it to a curiosity list rather than acting upon it immediately. That way, when you go through the list next week, you'll know what you were not really interested about and pick the one's that was really fascinating.
Create vs Consume :
Track your ratio of consumption vs. creation. If it's 90:10, you are definitely going wrong. I prefer my ratio to be 20% consumption and 80% creation. So, in a day if I spend 2 hours in exploration, I should not be spending more than 20 mins in research. Rest of the time should be spent on doing, dealing with the problems and finding solutions to my own implementation.
What do you think? How do you handle the information overload in this era where there's bulk of information and you don't know where to start.