Deep consumption of information … free from distraction … focused on the present moment … reflecting … connecting … deriving meaning. How often has this happened lately?

Most of us experience focused information consumption much less frequently than we should. We are lured by the power of technology to make us efficient information skimmers, multitaskers, and hyper-communicators. Often times, this efficiency is for the better; it allows us to be more informed, connected, and productive with our time. However, when short, fragmented mechanisms become our sole means of information consumption, we start to loose our ability to make important connections and see the big picture. This leads to shortsighted decisions and “status quo” work production. Life-changing decisions and high-value creation requires focus. There is a time and place for Twitter, RSS feeds, web aggregators, and news headlines, but we must also make time for focused, deep consumption of information.

Meaningful Knowledge

The goal is to be able to turn information into meaningful knowledge. For this post, the term “meaningful knowledge” is something that goes beyond the mere understanding of a concept or fact. Meaningful knowledge comes from the synthesis of many facts and concepts into a new and highly personal understanding that allows you to make good decisions, see the world differently, and create value in the world (whatever that means for you). This is big picture stuff, and it will provide you with frameworks and filters for organizing the rest of your life.

A Focused State

To turn information into meaningful knowledge, we must get into a focused state that allows us to consume, and reflect on, lengthy content (e.g. books, large magazine or blog articles, and long videos or podcasts). Sometimes, a collection of related content is the key to making important connections. Here, more than anywhere, focusing on relevant content while blocking out the rest is critically important. All too often, “more is better” thinking leads us to try and get to a little bit of everything we find, which can in turn cause us to lose focus on what is most important.

Focus: A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction

Leo Babauta has a nice ebook called focus – a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction. He does a good job explaining the importance of focus, and he provides lots of suggestions on how to achieve it.  Since he has freed this ebook from all copyrights, I have taken the liberty to aggregate it using Fogo Media’s Fogozine Mac Application – check it out here.  Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“It’s not technology we should be afraid of. It’s a life where we are always connected, always interrupted, always distracted, always bombarded with information and requests. It’s a life where we have no time to create or connect.”

“When you consume information, you’re helping your creativity as well — you find inspiration in what others have done, you get ideas, you gather the raw materials for creating.”

The Web Shatters Focus

An article published this week by David Carr in Wired Magazine further strengthens the argument. This article goes deep into the science behind the power of focus, and it is a gem as long as you focus long enough to read the whole thing. Basically, frequent switching of our attention prevents us from transferring memories from short-term to long-term storage. According to the article, distractions “impede our thinking and increase the likelihood that we’ll overlook or misinterpret important information.” Carr and I agree that there is a time and place for information skimming, but he points out that “once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself—our preferred method of both learning and analysis.” This is the problem. We do not allow any time for focused consumption of information. Here is one more great quote from the article:

“The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory, the scratch pad of consciousness, to long-term memory, the mind’s filing system. When facts and experiences enter our long-term memory, we are able to weave them into the complex ideas that give richness to our thought. But the passage from working memory to long-term memory also forms a bottleneck in our brain. Whereas long-term memory has an almost unlimited capacity, working memory can hold only a relatively small amount of information at a time. And that short-term storage is fragile: A break in our attention can sweep its contents from our mind.”

Ways to Harness the Power of Focus

Assuming you have bought into the argument that focused information consumption helps us build meaningful knowledge, lets move on to some practical ways to achieve it.  Here are six suggestions:

1. Free Yourself from Distractions: The first step to achieving focus is getting in (and staying in) the zone by shutting off potential distractions. At one extreme, this might require complete isolation from people, technology, and other interruptions. More likely, you just need to find a place where email, telephone, coworkers, and family are unlikely to bother you. I personally find coffee shops a great place to get away and focus. Airplane rides are superb. At a minimum, shut off email and your Twitter application when you are trying to focus.
2. A Beginning and an End: One reason books, newspapers, and magazines are easy to focus on is they have a clear beginning and end. On the other hand, your RSS reader and news aggregator web site are endless — they just keep going and going, and they link out to so may other places. As stated previously, there is a time and place where this is exactly what you need, but this works against you when trying to focus. Therefore, you should try to make sure your information has a beginning and an end. This is easy in the analog world, but you will have to be very disciplined when consuming information online.
3. Set Aside Time, Regularly: Get in the habit of establishing focused information consumption sessions on a regular basis. Splitting your time between information skimming and focused consumption is likely to provide the best results. You probably already do plenty of information skimming, so you need to figure out how to make focused consumption a more regular occurrence. Disconnect from the computer a few nights a week or schedule time on the computer where you use a tool to help block distractions (see next section for some suggestions).
4. Do Not Just Read, Think: Reflection and thinking should be a natural part of focused information consumption. This is where you find ways to relate the information to your personal situation, make connections, and pick up on subtle patterns that help you derive meaning. It is OK to let your mind wander.  When shut off from other distractions, your mind has a knack for wondering directly to the key realization that unlocks a new level of understanding.  Bingo! Ureka! Ah Ha!  This is what you are seeking.
5. Have a Purpose: Some of the most wonderful realizations come when you are least expecting them, but most of the time, it helps to have a purpose. Purposeful consumption (e.g. knowing what you are trying to accomplish) gives you focus, and it allows you to filter out information that is not relevant.  It keeps you on track, and it keeps you from checking the score of the ball game when you forget why you were reading something.
6. Keep a Journal: If your goal is to gain new understandings that relate to personal situations, I have found that nothing is more effective than keeping a journal by your side. When you read about something that makes you go “ah ha,” write it down. Every once in a while, look back at all your notes and look for connections. Look for things that might relate to your life. Write all that down as well. Repeat. It will focus you on the areas most important to you, and you will feel good about the result.

Technology Tools That Promote Focus

Technology, and the internet in particular, can be a huge distraction, but there are some tools that help promote focus. Here are three that I find useful, as well as a link to some suggested by Leo Babauta. I am really interested to find others. Please share any tools that you find useful for focused consumption of information.

1. Instapaper: This tool takes the core text from web pages and stores it so that they can be consumed later on your computer or mobile device. Information is fed to Instapaper through web bookmarklets and integration with other applications.  It can then be viewed on computers and mobile devices.  The most beautiful thing is that it throws away everything but the text–so no distractions. Also, the viewing applications on the computer and mobile devices are very simple and easy to use. It promotes focus. Comparing Carr’s article (referenced earlier) viewed on the iPad Wired application versus Instapaper, Milind Alvares writes that “as soon as you’re a few lines into the story, it’s apparent that [the iPad's] two-column/three-column layout was nowhere near Instapaper’s readability, with generous single column, whitespace, font size, making a huge difference.”  Instapaper has an great iPad application, so I recommend skipping the Wired app and instead read the articles using Instapaper.
2. Readability: Claimed to be “an arc90 laboratory experiment”, Readability is a great little web plugin. Go to the site, add the bookmarklet to your web browser, and use it when you are reading an article that requires focus. Like Instapaper, Readability gives you large text, lots of white space, and nothing but the content you are trying to read.
3. Fogozine: This may be biased because Fogozine is our application. However, we firmly believe that Fogozine is a tool that enables focused information consumption. It is one of the key motivators that drives us to build it. Unlike most digital tools, Fogozine gives you a “beginning and an end.” As discussed above, this is a powerful way to prevent distraction. Fogozines also push you to have a focus. Each Fogozine is created around a central theme, or purpose, and this allows you to see multiple related content sources side-by-side. Having this all in one package (and one application) makes it easier to make connections and spot patterns. Finally, like Instapaper and Readability, we strive to make Fogozines simple, clutter-free, and easy to read, yet we also allow for other information mediums such as video, audio, and pictures.  An example Fogozine can be found here.

Finally, here are some more technology tools suggested by Leo Babauta.