After being tasked to come up with a personal information consumption rule by the final Note to Self mini-episode in the Infomagical project, I’m basing my guideline off of the “Best Friend Question” in Dan and Chip Heath’s amazing book Decisive. The BFQ is basically a decision-making strategy that pushes you to gain some distance from your dilemma by asking the question
What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?
Drawing upon this, Continue reading
Well, looks like I won’t be reading The Verge today.
Infomagical challenge 3 is all about intentional information consumption; time to whole-hog preempt the temptation to mindlessly click from tidbit to tidbit of news. In addition to pushing me to further restrict my information diet, today’s mini-episode of Note To Self offers a fascinating glimpse at 13th-century strategies for coping with information overload. Nice to find out that some of our information wrangling methods are tried-and-truer than I had thought.
Here’s a bit of news that I will be checking out as these items do pertain to my goal of being focused on creativity:
Moments after unlocking my phone can feel like those times I walk into the kitchen and think, “Why am I here again?” Maybe those moments will now be a thing of the past, at least for today.
This screenshot vouches for my commitment to Infomagical Challenge 2: app tidying.
Will I get irritated by the additional swipes and taps now needed to launch apps? Will I be frantically digitally groping for transit info after unlocking my phone as my commute commences? Will I just absolutely love how intentionally I must now use my phone? Will this be instrumental in building that monochronic work behavior Infomagical Challenge 1 considered? Time to find out.
Time for some serious monotasking.
Today’s Note To Self podcast mini-episode starts a week-long social social science experiment by instructing participants to live life at the speed of one thing at a time—to be monochronic if we must get technical about this. With this charge to be single-minded in today’s activities, it’s time to do whatever it takes to keep focused on what’s at hand—time to use an email auto-reply, turn on do not disturb mode, take off the smartwatch, work in wifi-free zones, maybe even set up a mini Zen rock garden. Should make for some good opportunities to do some deep work.
All right, Note to Self, you nailed it with Bored & Brilliant, so how could I not be onboard with Infomagical, the chance to wrangle unruly information consumption in the service of nurturing my psyche?
Can’t wait until all the infomagic kicks off next week!
A Contemplative Compilation 