Curating the stream

The best thing about sharing an office with another business owner is the gold that comes out of some of our conversations.

I share an office with a expert in online education. He shared an article with me recently based on an ongoing conversation I seem to be having with people about the ubiquitous nature of information and how it overwhelms our senses.

The article was great but the concept that stood out clearest to me was this:

We have so much information at our fingertips if we do not proactively curate the stream we will be washed away in the river.

Every few weeks I see a Facebook post in which someone dramatically declares there intentions to disengage. It’s usually proclaimed with an air of prophetic intensity, as if the rest of us will also follow suit. Usually within a day or two I notice the same person liking and sharing content.

Couldn’t hack the disengagement I guess?

I think there idea of curating the stream is a much healthier one than disengagement. You don’t have to follow every friend, engage in every argument or read every article. And you definitely don’t have to know everything.

Here’s how I try and make sure I am curating a stream and not getting overwhelmed with information.

Unfollow people who are unhelpful. It’s important to be careful here because we don’t want to create an insular bubble and only surround ourselves with those we agree with. Challenge and disagreement are valuable and helpful, non stop complaining isn’t
Unlike those pages you liked just because they are run by a friend, you felt obliged to or you liked in a frenzy of online information amassing
Limit your time with an app like Self Control and use a system for reading content ‘later on’

Knowledge is power but too much knowledge is overwhelming.

If you limit and control the content you consume you will be happier and less likely to be frozen, procrastinate and me limited by the ‘paradox of choice’.