How you select the information that matters

In today’s newsletter we will discuss information and how you select the information that matters.

You see… yesterday I went for a walk through the center of Cluj with a friend of mine. I discovered that right in the pedestrian area, next to the church of St. Michael, a book fair was taking place. So we went there “to give an eyelash” too.

Walking through the shelves, seeing so many attractive books and titles, I remembered something I realized a long time ago: there is too much information in the world that we have access to.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just makes it nearly impossible to find the right information that really matters.

Imagine that in addition to all the books in the world (which are both physical and digital), we have access to millions of documents, articles, videos, events, etc.

And unfortunately our time is limited.

So is our energy.

I could say that so does our ability to absorb information, but here I still think it tends to infinity (debatable).

So how do you deal with all the information we have access to?

And why would you want to deal with it in the first place?

Because you know what they say: “knowledge is power”. Knowing valuable information from different areas of life can help you lead a fulfilled and abundant life, with peace of mind and perhaps even enviable results.

It helps you to have the impact you want in the world.

It helps you understand that there are things beyond us that we can’t necessarily control, but we can accept them as they are (we don’t go against the currents of the river, we follow them).

Here’s how I deal with information. These are methods that I have formed and optimized over time.

1. Understand what information is

I see information as everything that surrounds us, not just what is written in books. You get information by looking at the windows of a store. You get information from the people around you.

Information you take from the work you do every day. Information taken from movies/series/shows. Information you take from the events you participate in. Information you take from everything you consume on the Internet (reels, carrousel posts, articles, YouTube videos, books, etc.). Information is infinite, but your time and energy are finite.

If you don’t learn to prioritize and channel your energy into what matters to you, you will always end up distracted. Anything irrelevant is a distraction.

2. Determine what is important and a priority for you.

Knowing these things will make it easier for you to filter out irrelevant information and focus on what matters. For example, if your main goal is to reach 10,000 euros monthly personal income, you should probably start saying “NO” more often to different information that doesn’t matter at the moment.

3. Control your mind, thoughts, emotions

Once you’ve truly understood what information is and determined what’s important to you, it’s impossible to get where you want to go if you don’t have control. And the control is within you. How you respond to the information may or may not affect you.

The decision is yours. For example, if you are in traffic, in a very congested area, you most likely feel like getting angry. But will this solve the traffic problem? Not. So, learn to control your reactions to what’s around you.

Your thoughts are what you can truly control. Everything that is external is either difficult to control, or unpredictable, or impossible to control.

4. Get access to information

Although we have access to information, we have noticed that people in general do not make much use of this universally valid access. I see this on Facebook groups where people actually ask such stupid questions that could be solved with a simple google search. But hey, that’s where your advantage comes in, right? Learning how to access information will make your life much easier.

To get access to the information I use the following:

Google. I’ve learned to google and find just about anything I need. All I do is add the right keywords related to my unique situation and flip through a few pages quickly until I find the answer. In general, if the information I want is not related to very specific things in Romania (ex: taxes, legislative changes, etc.), I look for the information in English.

For example, books: many times before I read a book, I look for information about it so that I can guarantee that the book is suitable for me. So I quickly look up its synopsis on the internet and then look up what people are saying about that book. Later I find it for free in pdf format (mostly English) and start studying it. If I liked what I read, I also buy it in physical format from the bookstore. If not, I’m not wasting my time.

This is just a small example related to books. More recently, I use ChatGPT quite often for quick research. If I want to go in depth, I search in different sources on the Internet.

You can get access to information if you have the right people around you. For example, if it’s about accounting, the fastest thing I can do is ask my accountant and she clears me up in a few seconds. It may have taken her a few years to understand and know the information, but she gives it to me in seconds.

That is also the reason why when you have a mentor or when you turn to a consultant in a certain field, you are not actually paying him for the time you spend with him, but you are paying him for the years of experience behind him. Think about how much you know about your field and how much you’ve been through. Think how long it took you to come to a valid conclusion in your field, and how quickly you can solve another person’s problem just by giving them the right answer.

There was also a little story about a mechanic who was an expert on radiators. The mechanic was called to fix a problem on a cruise ship. The problem seemed to be very complicated.

People struggled for weeks to resolve the situation but failed. The expert mechanic solved their problem after 2 hammer blows in less than 5 minutes. For those 5 minutes he asked them $20,000. People gasped when they heard the price and demanded justification. The mechanic told them: “the price for hammering is $2. The price because I knew how to hammer it is $19,998.

5. Filter information and get rid of noise

You can get access to information from anything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the information is good or relevant to you. For example, sometimes I also participate in some webinars of colleagues in the field, just to see where I stand or if they have any special tips that I didn’t know about. But to avoid wasting my time and energy watching the entire webinar or event that can span several hours, I prefer to quickly watch the recording afterwards. And when I watch that recording I watch at X2 playback speed and with many skips. Actually, I don’t have the time, energy and mood to listen again to what I already know. And I try to get the essential information straight.

At physical events the only reason I still go sometimes is not for information, because at those events the chances of finding something profound that is useful to me are very slim. And then I go strictly for networking. It may sound arrogant, but it’s not at all. I had a period in the past where I would go to all the events and get involved in anything I could to learn new things and gain experience. The idea is that at the events there are general presentations and it is not possible to go deep into the subject.

You have to keep the audience’s attention, and you can’t do it the same way as in a seminar. Therefore, if you want to find out more (and more relevant) information from a speaker, you better go and talk to him directly after the event. Or you go and consume that important content: the book he’s written, the podcast, or whatever you find that’s deeper.

There is a lot of noise on the Internet. Let’s take TikTok for example. Yes, it’s cool that in 1-2 minutes you see the essence of a whole book for example. It’s super cool that you have all the information packed into those seconds of video. But again, it misses the point. And it’s hard for us to retain the information. In second 2 you scroll further. You can possibly save the video for later. But let’s be serious.. who the hell watches hundreds of videos saved for later again?

The problem is that you quickly forget what you learn. At the moment it seems cool. It’s all wow. Be pleasantly surprised. Like, comment, share, save. And after 1 day you forgot the information if you didn’t notice it and if you didn’t sit to reflect on it.

Information filtering is essential these days. We have so much information around. We are exposed every second to information from all sides. We must learn to avoid the noise as much as possible and take in only what is important to us. Finally think at the end of a day how much information you have gone through and how much you have left. Or think about what percent of that information was actually relevant to you. In reality most of them don’t matter.

There would be more to say about this topic of information, but I’ll stop here for now.

Last important mention: everything I said above is subjectively interpreted by each of us.

You and I can read the same books and go through the same information and still understand things very differently from each other. That’s because each person sees the world in a unique way. We all have special lenses with which we look and understand what is around us.

Imagine reading The Principles by Ray Dalio and then imagine giving the same book to a 16-year-old. You realize that experience, level of intelligence, way of perceiving information speaks for itself. The way they interpret the same information to you is totally different. Maybe there are things in that book that meant a lot to you and didn’t even matter to the other person.

We all have access to information. Maybe not to the same extent. The way we read and understand it differs greatly.

Choosing to surround yourself with people who are experts in different fields helps you get through life better.

Choose to invest in education, training and yourself.

See you next week.

Good luck and stay strong!

Andrei