April 1 – Spring Cleaning Day for Information Junkies
I know, I know. The first day of the fourth month is the April Fools’ Day. Although not practically a holiday, many people celebrate and enjoy it.
Please let me be clear on this. I don’t have anything against April Fools’ Day. In fact, I watch my RSS reader more closely throughout the day. Counting the number of those news items that are really lies is fun.
I hope I will be doing better at spotting them this year…
This idea came to me a while ago. Now for some people they may have a casual schedule without anything special. If you are one of them, you can still use the information in this post so that the next time you take half a day off, you can at least have an alternative that is productive and healthy in the long run.
For the rest of us who decide to loosen up, you probably have an idea about my proposal. But first let me introduce you to the train of thoughts behind this idea. That will help you understand the value better.
The Never Ending Pursue of Information
Bloggers are knowledge workers — a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959. We need information to keep us on the edge.
If you are a news blogger, being able to break news is necessary to drive significantly more traffic than other blogs. Technology bloggers have to know the latest technology to write intelligently about it.
Even marketers have to experiment and practice in the field they are mostly unfamiliar with so they could figure out how to make use of the new technology to communicate with the audience properly.
So we decided long time ago to check emails and RSS feeds a few times a day. In terms of emails, we are expected to reply within minutes. Or else, someone who also has our instant messaging id will start bugging us.
Even if your blog mostly contains timeless information, chances are you are sucked into the same ritual whether you realize it or not.
As if it is not bad enough, very likely the volumes of information will go up in the future. The fact remains that we only have 24 hours a day.
Worse Still… Information Collectors
There is still a worse and unproductive trait than what I explained above. I think I’ll never be able to get rid of this for quite some time.
Looking at my hard drive, I have nearly 1 terabytes of data. Yes, one million of a million bytes. From music to e-books and audio / video programs.
While most of them are organized alphabetically, they are still too much information. Desktop search tool doesn’t help much. With this amount of data, I still find myself going straight to Google to find answers and even more resources.
I know people who are collecting any kind of white papers, e-books, email newsletters. They also store recordings of webinars and teleseminars. Some of them even spend money on tons of programs in both CDs and DVDs. Most of those materials are forgotten once they were downloaded or stored.
The Little Boy and His Coin
That reminds me of a story of a little boy who dropped his coin in an antique and valuable vase. He put his hand into it, grabbed the coin but could not withdraw it.
His father came to try his best, but nothing seemed to work. Almost at a point they were going to break the vase, when all of a sudden his father told his son to make his last attempt.
“Open your hand, hold your fingers out straight and relax, and then pull.”
To his astonishment the little fellow said, “Oh no, father. I couldn’t put my fingers out like that, because if I did I would drop my coin.”
Ain’t We Like the Little Boy?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I know that we are in many ways still resemble that little boy.
How much information you decided to keep, just to forget it? How many issues of magazines did you put aside on the “weekend reading list” but later found the pile can only grow?
This was when the idea about spring cleaning struck me. April 1st seemed to be a good day, since it is the start of the second quarter. Rather than spending too much time looking for creative April Fools’ lies, why not spend some time positively to improve your productivity for the next 12 months?
And if you worry about missing some of the cool things, don’t be. You will find bloggers who compile a list the next day.
Proposed Solution to Information Overload
Every solution to information overload boils down to two words: minimize and prioritize. Most information that we saved and never used are junk, except perhaps some documents that you should keep for the sake of having an archive.
Junkies keep junk. The problem is how to be at least 95 percent right about the decision of purging things. That needs some experience and good intuition. But I never worry about that too much either.
If you learn to be a good search engine user, chances are even if you need any piece of information at later date, you can still fetch it in a few minutes — versus an hour if you bury it in your hard drive.
You can try the following method to minimize the risk though.
Spend a few hours, or the full day if you will, to go through your pile or virtual pile of information and start the cleaning process. If you feel sure you will need the information in the near future, keep it. If it has to be kept in an archive, leave it. Otherwise, put it into the closet. Yes, I have a folder on my hard drive with that name.
Stuff in that folder can be deleted after 6 months without use. If you create a new subfolder inside the “Closet” folder, you will be able to sort by creation date and know for sure when was the last time you put your files in the bin.
For any piece of information that you keep and perhaps want to take action later, write down in your someday or may be list (if you use GTD) so you know your plan.
Resist the temptation to save stuff unless there is a strong reason for doing so. Let go of the coin. Get your hand out of it and save the vase.
Go to your email inbox and unsubscribe to email newsletters that don’t give you any value for months. Those will only add to the amount of collected information, be it the email itself or product that you purchase because of it.
Apply the same filter to your RSS reader. Last time I did this, I’m able to cut down half of the number. Most RSS feeds that are active last year may not be so this year. Get rid of them too.
Develop a Strategy for Information Consumption
Don’t feel bad if in the next few months, you still find yourself adding stuff to your repository. Perhaps all of us do that. I don’t know, but at least I do that regularly. It doesn’t bother me much because I know I make use everything that I can afford for that day and one day I’ll dump all the rest — which is “junk” — again.
Put into your schedule every day and check your emails and RSS reader only at a specific time of the day. If you feel guilty about it, check 2-3 times, but no more.
Processing input such as emails and RSS feeds in batch is something I learned from Timothy Ferris in his book “Four Hours Work Week”. I’m far from working four hours a week, but the productivity that I gained from batch processing is vast.
Schedule some time for educational materials. Invest in yourself, but do it smartly. Organized courses and e-books can be far more valuable than random information you find on web sites.
So there’s a simple plan for April 1st. I bet you’ll find value in it if you actually take actions.
If you read after April 1st, you’re still welcome. You could begin the same process anytime you want and notice an increase in productivity the next day just because you feel more organized.
Sounds excellent for me. It will be my spring cleaning day on April 1st. Make it yours if you like this idea.
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