Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to consume information more efficiently.
As someone who enjoys keeping up with current trends around my interests, I always appreciate a good post or discussion around a topic that pertains to them. However, I have not been very efficient when it comes to discovering information I actually want to consume.
My primary method of consuming information has historically been through browsing websites that aggregated it. Reddit, Hacker News, Medium, etc. Nonetheless, I had found myself spending more time looking for something to read than actually reading.
Recognizing that and not being happy with it, I ranked different methods by efficiency I use (from most to least) and came up with the following:
For a month, I challenged myself to strictly exhaust the top-level options before moving to the lower levels, and unsurprisingly I found that I spent significantly less time searching for information than I did consuming it. I hardly ever reach the lower levels, and I feel the quality of information I’m consuming has on average increased.
This process was pretty simple, but I’m happy with it and I thought it was worth sharing. I plan to continue this strategy until something better comes along.