Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Selective Ignorance--Practical Tips for Developing a Low Information Diet



Tim Ferriss advocates the practice of selective ignorance. Selective ignorance is where you edit out information in your life that is useless and irrelevant to your projects in order to free up more time. A low information diet is great advice until you try to implement it. Then, you have to make decisions, and that sucks. So, I will help you out with these practical tips.

A person's media consumption is person relative. What is valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. For instance, information on weight training is valuable to someone who is into bodybuilding but not so valuable to a marathoner. A history professor will subscribe to blogs on history but not blogs on astronomy. For the most part, people have no problem selecting and keeping the info that is really important to them. It is the clutter that becomes an issue. Here is a list of the most obvious garbage that most people can live without:

1. CELEBRITY GOSSIP

Entertainment news is great. This helps you discover movies and music you might like. Celebrity gossip is just trash. Besides, most of the really juicy stuff makes it to the mainstream media anyway. But, for the most part, you will live perfectly fine not knowing what so-so is doing with so-so under the influence of their drug of choice.

2. SPORTS

Sports is not much different from gossip except the celebrities in question are in shape. Otherwise, it is the same drama. Hard core sports geeks get into stats and the minutiae of the west coast offense. But unless you make your living in this area, this is a waste of life. You can live without sports. Play some sports instead.

3. BUSINESS NEWS

This is one of my favorite areas of news, but it really is a waste of life. I believe in passive investing and using index funds, so you don't need to keep up with CNBC or watch tickers all day. Just invest your money in index funds and forget about it. This benign neglect will give you a good return while freeing up your time to do the things you really love.

4. LEFTARD/FASCTARD BLOGS AND MEDIA

It doesn't matter if you read Daily Kos or Red State. They are both pretty damn useless. This is because these outlets and others like them only do two things. They distort the facts by putting spin on them, and they are no different than people rooting for opposing teams in the same sport. For the most part, both sides want big government except they want it to be the big government of their respective party. The best way to ignore this nonsense is to wise up and become a libertarian. Libertarians don't believe in a side. They believe in freedom.

On a sidenote, I think being up to date with news and current events is worthwhile. They affect your life, and you should at least know what the hell is going on with people who wield so much influence over the conduct of your life.

5. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

I love science and technology but reading about it makes no sense. The major stuff hits the major news while the minor stuff can safely be ignored. Tech news is a big part of what is on the internet, but that is because we have so many nerds on the internet. Unless you work in these industries, you can ignore this area.

That's it for my list of information to ignore. These recommendations may not fit everyone, but they certainly fit me.

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