The Dangers of Information Dieting

Hi Nick,

I rarely watch the news these days. I’ll catch it if there’s something I hear about which particularly interests me. Otherwise I can find plenty of other things to feel sad about.

I used to keep a list of people at work who annoyed me. The problem was, some people went out of their way just to get to the top of my list.

I’m looking forward to hearing about your ideas.

Cheers
Dave

Well information dieting is a bit strange in the age of the internet, I have a few friends that restrain themselves from surfing online or watching to much TV. Personally, I think TV is garbage, the only interesting thing to watch every now and then are movies. Don’t get me started with the news. I like getting all my information from the interwebs.

Love hearing your voice on any issue, but I think your May experiment was an Information Fast, rather than a diet. I know of the Ferriss principles from his site and newsletters, and he does get and deal with email and info, he just has it screened to his filters so only the prime ‘of interest’ arrives at his eyes/ears.

Just like dieting should have us toss out our junk food and bad eating habits, so might an info diet help us take in only the healthy stuff. You’ve inspired me to trim my RSS list, unsub from the newsletters I never read, and turn to BBC America for the news that Jon Stewart doesn’t cover! Thanks, and looking forward to your tips. (And this font you have comments in? SUCH a pleasure!)

I have been on all-I-can-eat information diet for some time. I eat so much that I am often found in the toilet. At least I think that’s what my wife means when she says “You have a lot of toilet knowledge”.

Well said. Too much information dieting and you’re going to miss the random thing that changes your whole outlook on life for the better (again).

Alright. I haven’t seen the news in… a year? If it happens to be on at a friend’s house when I’m visiting, I’m hopelessly sucked into this void of - ohmigod… .NEWS!!!

I cried when they turned the TV off to have quiet. Seriously.

I am horribly out of touch with world events. “Did you hear about that fire?” Harry asked. “What fire?” I was clueless. “Um, the one that ate California?”

Not good, that. Plus, it happened a few days back, I hear.

Weather? No clue. I open the door. A movie? January 2007. Cassanova, to be exact. That was the last one I watched. (Dora the Explorer does *not* count, thank you very much.)

Depending on friends to fill me in? Um, well, they do, if it’s an event so huge that either three small nations blew up at once. They’re not very reliable on real-time updates otherwise.

Am I on a diet? Yup. Not by choice. I’m too fucking busy reading feeds and blogs to read the news or watch TV or stay updated. But you said it, Nick: it’s bloody isolating.

I’m looking forward to next week, because the top of my list is fucking phones period, never mind that they’re i or e or whatever. I hate phones.

/rant

I’d like to make a distinction between interest in the world around you and actually living in it.

Frak “productivity.” I want to live a full life with no regrets for living too small.

You started to touch on that.

I’m looking forward to what you’re going to share, because I’ve been sensing a yearning for this. Staying in the loop, but in a healthy, balanced way.

We don’t watch TV here, either - just movies or Seinfeld on DVD.

I seriously need to read the news more, so thanks for the reminder.

Can’t wait for part 2 of this article. I was also inspired by Tim Ferris’s take on low information diets, also Nassim Taleb’s ideologies agreed so I try to keep my eye away from the news. I have now started to watch 5 minutes of news daily any hour on the hour (sky news) just to give me a glimpse of what is going on. I actually only read newspapers for the sport and gossip.
Superb Post!

Maybe instead of an information diet, we just need to be selective about the information we intake. Not too much, not too little and in the right combination.

Hey, a nice little metaphor that - it can be extended quite well.

My friend I think you missed the point a bit. The value of shutting off information is not just so you can work for an extra 20 minutes, it’s so you can have a life for an extra 4+ hours. Following the news - especially as a function of habit - and devoting mental energy to it costs most people way more than 20 minutes a week!

The point of an information diet is *not* to enable apathy, laziness, or abdication of our responsibility to be caring and engaged citizens. Tim Ferriss himself is quite openly against all of these things and mentions this periodically on his blog.

I’m an information dieter, and quite happily so. I know what’s going on in the world… if it’s significant enough to warrant a major headline in a newspaper. (This applies to both national/international stories and local news.) I follow Tim’s approach of catching up on the news, not attempting to keep up with it. I certainly do not seek out news repeatedly by force of habit or because I need some procrastination activity to occupy my brain, as I used to.

This summer I haven’t missed much. I know how the US did in the Olympics and why, that McCain largely closed the gap with Obama and how, that Russia is in Georgia… and why. I read significantly into the issues that are most pressing and skip the daily flood of everything else.

Our ‘glorious stream’ of free speech, live news, and entertainment is glorious largely because of its volume and accessibility, not because of its quality. My simple pleasure AND my inspiration is silence, which requires me to be much more deliberate and intentional in deciding how to use my time. No more sitting in front of the TV just because it’s there.

Information dieting is only isolating in the sense that we modern Americans have largely forgotten that we have more in common - more to share with each other - than having seen the same movie or the same argument on Fox News. I find I have much more flexibility to get out and have lunch with a friend (in person!) than I did when the glorious stream was competing for that time.

I also have more time to spend examining and exchanging valuable ideas and philosophies such as those that fill this blog. But I guess I could go see the Sex and the City movie instead…

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. I’m glad to have sparked some opposing views!

@GirlPie - You’re right, of course. Tim actually calls it a “media fast” in his book. He suggests trying a week without any media instead of a month on a diet. Perhaps my adaptation affected the experiment!

@James Chartrand - Men with Pens - I feel your pain with phones, man. More on this soon…

@Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome - I came to the same conclusion about being wiser about our attention drains. There definitely is a balance — finding it is the hard part!

@Ken L - I agree with you that information dieting isn’t the same as shunning responsibility. Perhaps I’m simply reacting negatively to Tim’s advice to “cultivate selective ignorance” which, to me, is swinging slightly too close to sociopolitical narrow-mindedness.

Close yourself to other points of view by allowing similar sources to take a wide stream of information and present them as a summary, and you immediately amplify one of the most dangerous factors in any kind of mass-media culture: bias. Sure — it may be more convenient, and it may be more conducive to ‘lifestyle design’, increased output, and buggering off around the world, but I’m not convinced that it’s a very responsible way of learning about the world around us. I’d also suggest that there’s a danger that it could negatively skew important decisions, like who you vote for, who you bomb, what you eat, where you travel, or even who you marry!

Yes, there are a lot of things that compete for our attention and, no, we certainly don’t need to attempt to digest them all, but I think that people need to learn to be their own sieves as information comes in, rather than relying on other people and familiar sources to help them ‘catch up’ later. Tim suggests that information that can’t be actioned isn’t worthy of our attention, and that just feels a little narrow minded to me.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing — in the UK we’re used to inherently distrusting almost everything we read or watch! We’ve been conditioned to follow-up, find out more, and form our own opinions, regardless of the cost in time. I’m not suggesting that the rest of the World doesn’t do the same thing, but my feeling is that the thirst for information may be more pronounced in Britain.

I agree with you about the social element, though — whether it’s 4 hours or 20 mins, there’s never enough time to kick back and relax with friends.

As for the Sex and the City flick: I’ve heard mixed reports from numerous sources…

Nick,

I like my life immediate and simple. I haven’t watched the news as a regular thing in years. If there’s something I need to know about, I peek in. It’s a depressing time-suck that really doesn’t affect my business, my loved ones or myself, so what’s the point?

I listen to a half an hour of national/ world news on the radio as I commute in the morning and I can tell you I’m ten times more informed than most around me, with just that pithy distillation. (I think that’s your “same information in less time.”)

Okay, sometimes I don’t know it will rain at noon or that so-and-so died, but I survive it pretty well.

I don’t Twitter, Plurk, or use thirty-two other social sites. Sometimes I think they sound like fun, but there are only so many hours in the day, and for me, if I don’t get started, I don’t need the diet. Everyone knows how to email me, and I respond fast—what would a social site do for me?

I don’t read every blog that I hear is the new fabulous. I’m very, very careful about adding to the list I do read. There has to be consistent value over a period of time before I consider it, and I usually dump something else off my subscriptions if I’m going to add one.

Phones? I like getting business off to a fast start with the phone. I love hearing the voice of a good friend who’s not close enough to meet me for a glass of wine. Other than that, ugh. I prescreen everything. Huge timesaver.

As Alex says, I’m selective. So many folks complain about being overworked and stressed. I think a lot of it is unnecessary overload we’ve put on ourselves, like complaining about being overweight while eating the fourth waffle of the morning.

A fast might be extreme, but a diet, if you’ve let yourself get info-bloated, might be just the thing. Being out of the loop is bad; compressing the time it takes to stay plugged-in is super.

Look forward to agreeing with you again in the next post!

Regards,

Kelly

I don’t think Tim Ferriss is promoting cerebral atrophy (he *literally* favors quite the opposite) or suggesting that you should passively trust your friends or similar and biased sources for a final opinion of your own. He’s saying you can get the who-what-where basic facts from headlines and your friends and be just fine. Tornado in Texas? Okay, got it. These are the things that drain our time and energy a hundred times each week without contributing any lasting value.

Beyond that, your friends are just the first filter to know what stories and issues are significant enough to warrant your own investigation. The emphasis is on ’selective’, not ‘ignorance’. He’s definitely sociopolitically active. His blog is great reading.

That said, I agree that we probably should find a more measured way to deal with information. Many issues only become immediately pressing and actionable when it’s too late. Waiting until this point to pay attention can be dangerous and stupid. I’m concerned about this luxurious degree of information ignorance I am able to enjoy. I can enjoy it partly because enough other people are still keeping their eyes on the road.

The problem is that I don’t know how to truly filter all the information well without it consuming an unhealthy amount of my mental, emotional, and clock resources.

The amount of noise we’re faced with in our information stream is just too much.

It’s too much.

(Keep in mind that the amount of media content in the US is far, far greater than in the UK.)

A little background on me that will probably amuse you — I’m a former local TV news reporter. Information, or more correctly endless facts were the center of my daily life and I have seen quite clearly that the overwhelming majority of them simply do not matter.

As for the Sex and the City flick: I’ve heard mixed reports from numerous sources…

See? This is all I shall ever need to know.

@Kelly - I completely respect your approach to selective consumption. Your no-nonsense attitude is reflected in your own blog, which is always beautifully balanced — you never fail to hit the topic on the head without being too wordy. It’s the reason why I never miss a post!

I think you’re right about people creating their own workloads, too. Often it simply stems from failing to say no.

@Ken L - I agree with you. Tim’s certainly very smart and up on current affairs. What concerns me is that some of his readers may use the concept of ’selective ignorance’ as self-justification for disengaging with the World outside of their tiny sphere of existence. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong over time!

The problem is that I don’t know how to truly filter all the information well without it consuming an unhealthy amount of my mental, emotional, and clock resources.

It’s tough, isn’t it? I hope some of my tips next week may help.

Fascinating that you’re a former reporter. I can see why you don’t want reminding of the buzz of the newsroom. It must feel lovely to have gotten away from that. Your photography is truly exceptional — congratulations on the new direction!

Thanks to all who’ve contributed so far.

First of all, let me say I love the design of this blog. It’s so beautiful with large fonts and clean background. It feels….energetic!

This was a well written, humorous and effective counter statement to the information dieting craze.

Very interesting. As I as reading it, I found myself agreeing that becoming too much of an informatipon dieter would make me feel disconnected. It’s true. The computer is the link to my outside world.

You see, I’m deaf and while I have a working phone, I rarely use it. Virtually all of my communications are online. Strange, huh? Imagine me going on an “information diet.” Especially one where I want to lose tremendous information weight.

Wouldn’t work for me.

I know this is sort of ‘off topic’ but… Why the iPhone hate?! ;-)

@Stephen Hopson - Thanks for the kind words and lovely comments. You make an interesting point about ‘net dependency. I think that my own unwillingness to disconnect from the great stream of collective consciousness stems from that dependence too!

@Joshua Hughes - I don’t hate it — I just think that it’s hopelessly overrated and that it plays a big part in the kind of problems that any sort of gadget-dependency brings. I’m planning to write a short ditty on this over the next couple of weeks that should explain why without boring anyone’s socks off. Stay tuned!

Late for the party, as effing usual. Why? Because I don’t subscribe to your blog. While I love it, I don’t subscribe. (I don’t subscribe to any blogs, actually, so it ain’t just you.)

I found that two things were going wrong when I was in readeveryblogrightfuckingnowville:

1. I got sucked into what everybody posted today and eventually realized that I didn’t actually care.

2. I found myself staying in the same damn circle. And the same damn circle is not good for biz.

That is my 2 cents. I started writing this comment like, 4 hours ago and got sidetracked so now I forget all the brilliant wisdom I was planning to impart. Crap.

Naomi,

You aren’t one of my four subscribers? Darn. *crosses name off list*

If you’ve stopped the car in hardlyeverreadanyeffingblogsville, isn’t it kinda lonesome there? I mean, there’s selective—and thank you, Nick, I know who one of my readers is :) —and then there’s selective, eh?

I like the little circle I have (including IttyBiz, of course), and I love drawing new clients and readers in to it.

Until later,

Kelly

@Naomi Dunford - Until you outed yourself, I had assumed that you got up at 3am on a regular basis on the off-chance that I’d published an insight into advanced sock puppetry or home gin making, both of which could feature any day now.

For a non-subscriber, you feign interest remarkably well!

Funny, I’ve been thinking of cutting back, and then I read this…the most unlikely of posts. :) I think the problem is that I turn off the sound on my computer (so I can’t hear the “ding” of the emails) and hide my menu bar (so I can’t see the number of new emails that I have), but I repeatedly check it anyway. When there’s nothing to do online, I find something to do.

I’m a mom of two little ones, and my routine goes like this: play, get on the computer, play, get on the computer, play…I work on the computer, but work has been slow for the past week, and still…I’m on the computer. I think my kids just dumped a whole bottle of perfume downstairs, and still…I am finishing up this comment. So maybe that’s what cutting back is for?

Hahahaa

Now see that’s funny..at least to me, I am subscriber..I just haven’t been making comments here because I have to cut back somewhere or I would spend my entire day writing comments on all of the blogs I read and I have to find time somewhere…

So I suppose today is a good day to say Hi Nick, Naomi might not be a subscriber but I am and I care…

I’m just not as busy as Naomi at this stage of the game…yet.
(Kelly, I’m one of your four too)

Wendi,

Right back at ya. ;)

Later,

Kelly

Hey Nick, just got here from the 9rules blog and thought I’d share my thoughts. Great design and great name you have here. Tweeted this :) Cheers Simon

Well, you now have a 5th subscriber. :)

I tried the information fasting/dieting before. It does make me feel isolated. It was particularly bad when I was new in Memphis and had no friends to help me stay “in touch.”

Now, I just browse Google News once or twice a day and read what catches my eye. At work we have regular CNN discussions, too. No, not part of my job, just part of the weird social structure you find when working with…musicians. Yeah.

I think the term “information diet” makes the idea pretty unpalatable. Who really wants to go on a diet? A diet is about denying yourself things that you want.

What about “low-information lifestyle” instead? I find that I’m happier and calmer and more involved with my own life when I’m not constantly bombarded (that’s how it feels) with news, trivia and random information. Maybe I’m more productive too, but that’s not the main goal.

I’m also the kind of person who can turn on the TV, spin the dial for awhile, decide that nothing is worth watching and turn it off. So, go figure.

“cultivate selective ignorance”

Nick, I think you’re largely overlooking the “selective” part.

You, the person, get to do the selecting. If there’s a particular subject or collection of subjects that interest you instead of you’re spending hours weekly out of compulsive habit, you can choose to be knowledgeable about these subjects… and less knowledgeable about Britney’s anything.

Although during this election cycle, I must admit Paris Hilton’s energy thoughts were impressive.