The Art of Selective Learning: 3 Step System to Beat Information Overload
In our modern world, we are constantly bombarded with information. From emails to social media posts, articles to videos, the sheer volume of content can be overwhelming. Never before have we had so much information, yet sometimes it feels like we’re getting dumber because of it.
To combat this, I've developed a three-level learning system that acts as a filter, allowing me to intentionally absorb the knowledge most beneficial to me.
The Life Curation Questions determine what information first flows into my Learning Funnel, which then goes through 3 levels of filtration until the most valuable and relevant knowledge becomes solidified into my Council of Advisors.
Level 1: Title Scan
The first level is the title scan, which I use my Life Curation Questions, a set of guiding questions representing my interests and purpose, as the initial filter on emails, articles, books, videos - any form of content that comes my way.
For instance, my inbox used to be filled with tons of newsletters and updates. Over the past year, I've been ruthlessly unsubscribing from any mailing list that no longer serves my interest - basically Marie Kondo'ing my inbox.
The result is a much cleaner, more manageable collection of content that doesn’t trigger overwhelm anxiety every time I open up my email.
However, it's equally important to distinguish between content that's merely interesting versus content that serves my interests. We’re surrounded by content designed to capture our attention, often at the expense of our time and mental energy. So, I have to be mindful of what I even click on. This is an ongoing process, as interests evolve and what once seemed useful can become another source of noise.
For example, I signed up to a bunch of AI newsletters in the beginning of the year because I was curious about the direction of this new tech and how it’d make me more productive. Yet overtime, I found just too much noise out there. I didn’t need to constantly hear about how the latest hot AI tool will revolutionize X or how I needed to automate Y task in order to stay competitive.
I realized that all these email titles were designed to get me to click by playing into my insecurities and curiosity. As a result, I’d get stressed out by seeing these emails in my inbox. And after a certain point, I didn’t get anymore productive.
The content was interesting and indeed served my interests at one time, but once it no longer did, I clicked unsubscribe!
Level 2: Highlights and Notes
The second level involves highlighting and note taking. If a title catches my eye and I decide to dive deeper, a quick scan of the content is usually enough for me to get the gist of what's going on.
But there are often sections that really stand out, sections that I want to remember and review in the future. For online articles, I use Readwise to highlight these sections, which I can then annotate with a few notes. I do the same thing on Kindle.
These highlights are automatically pulled into my Logseq second brain for future reference. I'll also stop and synthesize particularly good insights into Tweets and Instagram Story posts, further ingraining the new knowledge into my mind as well as have a record to refer back on when I’m ready to use it for coaching or content.
Level 3: Mind Reconstruction
The third and deepest level of learning is what I call "Mind Reconstruction". This is when I recognize the genius of an author and aim to absorb their mindset and frameworks, effectively elevating them into my Council of Advisors, an imaginary mastermind group that advises me on any challenge that I face.
This process involves extensive mind mapping and diagramming of the author's concepts, often accompanied by questions and anticipated answers written on any blank portion of the pages. It’s as if I’m having a dynamic coffee chat with the author. It's a slow, intensive process, but the depth of knowledge and understanding I gain from one book or article far outweighs shallowly reading 100 books.
Mind maps are great at summarizing important concepts in my own terms so that I own the material. This is Donella Meadows’ book on Systems Thinking, and the arrows tie some themes to Nassim Taleb’s “Antifragile”. These maps allow my Council of Advisors to ‘talk to each other’ and solidify new concepts in my mind.
Mind mapping this single tech strategy article on Nividia, a graphics card company, allowed me to have an informed conversation with Intel’s Director of Engineering at a semiconductor networking event that same day, with little prior knowledge of the microchip industry.
As noted in "My Top 3 Books of 2022" (where you can find more examples of how I read books):
"If I can fully absorb even one of someone the caliber of Nassim Taleb, Marcus Aurelius or Donella Meadows, then I will be set in life. I've realized that it's not only the knowledge of the book that's important but the author's perspective and how they came to their conclusions. That's what allows me to think like them.”
Or as Bruce Lee would say:
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
And that's exactly it - it's not about knowledge absorption but its PRACTICE. Once I've absorbed the material through mental dialogue (wrestling?) with writer, I use it right away with the same rigor that I apply to stress testing my mental models.
While the 3 Learning Levels is portrayed as a funnel, it doesn’t mean I have to go through each level in order. It simply means that the quantity of information I look at decreases the deeper we go. Inversely, the effort also goes way up until we form the Council of Advisors, the gold standard for working knowledge.
At the end of the day, it’s not about consuming more content, but deeply consuming the right content. It’s about recognizing that if we can fully absorb the knowledge and perspective of a few select authors, we can gain insights that will serve us for a lifetime. These three levels of learning has helped me do exactly that while keeping the noise of information at bay.
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