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It’s not your job to read everything
Information management is about improving the quality of information in my stream, not creating an infinite list that I need to finish.
Use constraints to boost creativity
Limited time, resources, and information can sometimes represent opportunities to use constraints to boost creativity
Information is exchanged but knowledge is constructed
Information is exchanged. Knowledge is constructed. Amy Rae Fox (Twitter, 2022) Building better habits around information management isn’t the point. Using that information to construct knowledge is what moves the needle.
Writing regularly changes what you pay attention to
I often find my attention being hijacked by whatever happens to show up in my feed. And in the moment, that content may very well be interesting. The problem is that so much information can be interesting while still having relatively little value. When I’ve set aside 1-2 hours of writing time every day, my attention…
Design your academic workflow to do less
Improving your academic workflow isn’t about squeezing more things into less time. It’s about spending more time on fewer things.
Weekly review: Using Obsidian to close open loops
In this video, I do a walk-through of the weekly review that I do every Friday afternoon. The weekly review is a sweep through my entire personal and professional life, where I try to wrap up everything that might cause me any worry after I leave work. I call this a process of closing all…
Share what you learn
Never hesitate to share your knowledge; you’ll never know who might find it valuable. Overcome the intimidation of content creation with these tips: maintain a topic list, batch content creation, stick to a regular publishing schedule, and view unsuccessful efforts as experiments. Teach freely, as others’ shared wisdom has taught you.
Don’t use your inbox to manage tasks
Gt into the habit of moving information related to tasks out of your email inbox into an external system. The actual system doesn’t matter; pen and paper is perfect. Email is not designed for project management, and yet so many academics use it to keep track of tasks and their related information.
Email is an input into your work
Email is an input into your work, not your actual work. Related to this, sending email is not an output of your work. Email is a channel for information transfer and this information transfer should be aimed at moving your real work forward.
Avoid using email to coordinate a project
As soon as it feels like ‘planning by email’, move the email thread into a meeting where you can plan properly. It takes longer than simply responding to the email but it gives you a concrete plan to move forward.
Increase the quality of incoming information
In addition to reducing the amount of incoming information, you would also do well to increase the quality of that information.
Cull your inputs
We spend a lot of time trying to build better systems for managing more information. But maybe a better approach is to cull your inputs so that you can focus on your outputs.