Naiman Labs Newsletter #41. Consuming information and staying sane

Hey there, welcome to another issue of Naiman Labs newsletter! 👋

I'm excited to dive into another edition of our weekly newsletter, where we explore various aspects of our careers, productivity, communication and leading the team.

Today’s post is gonna be based on my personal experience, but I am quite sure you find it very relevant to your life. Continue reading and you’ll get why 😉

I have always been very curious about learning, improvement and knowledge consumption. Recently this has become even more important for my life sinceI have been working on a complex project helping our team member to learn and improve their skills.

It is quite easy to understand that in general we are quite mixed up with learning. We are spoon-fed in high schools and universities, but than they leave us on our own. And it is more. Today we live in the information overload era. And this information is not a high quality information. Every source of information fights for our attention (including me doing this right now 😈).

I want to share a couple of observations I find useful and try applying them in my day-to-day life.

🎯 Just-in-Time Learning vs. Just-in-Case Learning

In the traditional education we mostly follow “just-in-case learning” approach. We learn a bit of everything, just in case we might need it someday. This is a good way of building a strong foundation and getting a sense of what the vast world of knowledge offers. However this approach has a strong downside. It is pretty hard to keep the information and remember what you have learnt if you learn it “just-in-case”.

As a counter approach that we can apply is “Just-in-time” learning 📈 🛠️. Imagine this scenario: you kick off a new project, and as you go, you dive deeper into the subject.

• It's not just theory; it's practical, hands-on experience that goes hand in hand with your learning.

• In this case you get practical experience along with the theory and theoretical support at the same time.

• When we follow “Just-in-time” basically all the knowledge we receive will be applicable for the current needs (or we are quite certain it is not applicable at all). Therefore we remember it much better. We use multiple parts of our brain to learn: we read, we watch and we actually do it, applying in our day-to-day life.

Wait-wait, there is more 🤓

❌ Unintentional Learning: 📱 🐇

But what happens when we don't take charge of our learning? I am sure we all are too familar with this scenario:

• A catchy post pops up on our Insta/X/Telegram feed. Or even worse, we get the notification about this post.

• We can't resist clicking, even if it wasn't in our plans.

• Next thing you know, you've spent your entire morning scrolling and clicking one link after another, or you're up past 2 am still at it.

It's sneaky because these posts and articles don't feel like they take much time. One article, 3-7 minutes, what's the harm? But one leads to another, and you're down the rabbit hole.

I face this challenge daily. I'm subscribed to various newsletters, telegram channels, and public pages (like Morning Brew, WSJ, The Economist, Bloomberg, and Fast Company). When I receive a notification, it's a trigger that draws my attention and forces me to read.

But I don't want to follow someone else's plan; I want to stick to my schedule and be intentional about my information consumption. That’s what I do.

Taking Charge of the consumption

📚 ⏰ Read it later

I am subscribed to various newsletter and channels, plus I am a member of multiple professional chats where we share some good knowledge pieces. I know myself and I know that those notifications can disrupt me easily.

So I don’t dive into the content right away 📲

I actively use read-later apps instead. I send the piece of content to read-later app and revisit it when I feel like it. When I plan it. That's what I do, and it's been a game-changer for me.

There are several benefits of this approach for me:

1️⃣ Half the time, I can't even recall why I saved it (so it goes directly to archive, however when I was saving it it felt so important), but the other half, I read it with a purpose.

2️⃣ I usually allocate some time in the morning and during the day to look through my read-later app (I use Reader by Readwise).

3️⃣ When I do a research for my projects - my read-later app is one of the first places I check for the information instead of googling it.

🛠️ The toolkit:

Reader for Readwise - my app of choice. I like the interface and the highlighting feature as well as storage in Readwise is amazing. Everything is captured, everything is synced.

Pocket - very clean and tidy app, good widgets.

InstaPaper - very popular app, I find it a bit buggy, but it is also clean and easy to read.

Read-later note - another safe choice - add a single note in your note-taking app and store your links, or article titles there. Not the best option, but still an option 😉

⏰ Scheduled Learning Time:

• Make sure to allocate specific times each week to intentionally sift through your sources. ⏳

• My wife has a neat practice; she dedicates an hour every Sunday to see what's interesting out there. She previously compiled a list of the sources she finds interesting and relevant for her interests. It's her way of staying intentional about the content she consumes.

• By the way, you can follow her on LinkedIn for more insights. 😉

🔑 The Power of Being Intentional

Everything I described above targets the same principle. And this principle is about being intentional. Everyone is trying to feed us with the information today (including me, that’s exactly what I am doing to you right now). And it is very easy to be overloaded by the information.

So instead of following the plans of others’ it is better to follow your own plan and being intentional about when and what information you want to consume.

• Create your own plan: Decide what's worth your time and stick to it.

• Select what you want: Pick what you read and when you read it.

• Stay intentional: Make the most of your time and get precisely what you need.

Enjoy your learning! Vlad from Naiman Labs

✅ My affiliate link for Readwise - you’ll get extra free month!