Seeking Depth
The Internet is such a firehose. The information comes fast. The marketing comes fast. The new ideas, the new products, the next thing… fast, fast, fast.
I find myself getting pretty frustrated with the skimming it induces. A full night of superficial snippets can leave me with a lot of trivia and nothing of substance. I find it more important than ever to make sure I pull away from the bells and whistles every once in a while and actually go deep, immersing myself in something that engages my brain. Deliberately exploring a topic to a new level of understanding makes a lot more meaning for me than the skim.
In fact, if we were to collect all the things we hear and see each day and somehow conduct an audit to figure out what actually made it into our brain, we’d realize we can do without a lot of the barrage that occupies us.
So, why do we often choose to consume so much at a superficial level? I think it’s because choosing to actively ignore information that’s coming at you is like the problem with not buying a lottery ticket. How can you possibly not buy a ticket? This may be THE ONE. What if this ticket is the one that makes you rich? What if that next phone call is the President? What if the next big Internet sensation needs my investment immediately? What if a once in a lifetime announcement is just around the corner? All that hope, all those what-ifs… they cause a lot of attention to be directed to areas that rarely, if ever, have a payoff.
Here’s why some can do without lottery tickets: They get the math. They understand that one in 14,000,000 means you’ll typically spend $14,000,000 on tickets before you hit THE ONE. There’s an equivalent logic for understanding the information barrage, too. It may be less tangible, but intuitively, we know it’s there. If you step away from the constant flow and deliberately pursue and immerse yourself in what you want to see, you get more, you learn more. It’s more relevant. It’s more applicable to your life because you have selected, not received.
We’re now in a world where it’s easier for each of us to be our own program director. There’s unlimited information. It’s accessible at the click of a button. It comes on our time and on our terms.
It’s time to break an old habit – technology now allows you near complete control of the firehose. Don’t let others choose the messages for you.
The points that you make Nevin are why I have started switching back to reading non-electronic media such as books and magazines. I find that these older media simply make it easier to focus on what I am reading without jumping around/surfing around. There is definitely something to be said for focus and paying attention to the information that you are taking in and consuming. I just hope that these traditional media still have some sort of future. With Kindles, Sony Readers, iPad’s, etc… I may end up being forced back to the Net for all of my reading; something that I don’t relish.
I get lots of good information from blogs, but I’d say at least 80% of the stuff I internalize and incorporate into my life and my work comes from books. I’m a total book nerd. I don’t think we’re wrong. I suspect that simply because of the focus books offer, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
It may interest you to see what I’m reading, have read and am interested in reading – here’s my list on Google Books: http://books.google.ca/books?uid=1243527309352029799&as_coll=0