Reading on the low-information diet

[Huey]

Hello everybody, just read the book, first post and it's good to be here.

I'm a little confused about Tim's views on reading and was hoping you guys could help me out.

In the 'low-information diet' chapter the advice is to 'not read too much'. He recommends "no reading except for this book and one hour of fiction before bed". I am in two minds about this:

Firstly, I really like the idea. For years I have used reading as a crutch activity. I deluded myself into thinking that I was making progress by reading a book but was actually putting off uncomfortable actions and so never got any results. When I reduced my reading I gained hours in the day and felt less stressed.

However, if you are involved in creative work you must get an input of ideas from somewhere. For example, directors watch lots of movies, writers read voraciously and musicians listen to all types of music. I always thought that people who were considered 'well read', 'intelligent' and with a wide vocabulary were people who have read a great deal.

I know Tim recommends fiction before bed to aid sleep. Even Tim himself admits the contradiction at the end of the book as he recommends more books to read.

I know Tim's intention is to get us to stop procrastinating, to read with more focus i.e. something that you can apply today but can I spend the rest of my life reading just fiction?

I would love to hear everybody's views on this. Thanks.

[GriffCo]

I actually like how he called it a low-information diet. I took it as that, a diet. As in it is not necessarily a permanent thing.

[DaveCraige.com]

reading all the posts on this forum does not equal a low information diet. heh.

[kamakiri]

Dave, thanks for your enthusiasm, but 45 posts in 1 day is excessive.

Reviving dead threads with spam is excessive.

Signing up for every forum you can find in 1 month is excessive. Google yourself ffs.

It is great that your user name is your web site that is a 'blog' (I use the term lightly) that thinly covers your web design company, but there are better ways of going about promoting yourself than this.

[TimW]

reading all the posts on this forum does not equal a low information diet. heh.

Nor does posting on same.

[Sven]

45 fluffy posts in one day? Excessive does not seem to cover it. Ridiculous? Insane? Sad?

I now know I can ignore anything written by mr.com.

[TimW]

Yeah...someone here actually made the honor of my first entry to the ignore list.

[Sven]

Hey, that's a good idea, hadn't thought of that, never had any use for it!

[sadu]

In response to the OP...

I had a similar dilemma being in the SEO consulting field where everything changes every 5 minutes. I have recently cut off all my RSS subscriptions and now have no real way of keeping myself up to date.

I'm taking the approach that my lifestyle is changing, and so is my job. If I take the 80/20 to what I do, this means that I stop reading industry blogs and aren't going to be as up to date with what is happening. I won't be able to offer the best consulting advice to clients anymore. This is fine - I'm actively trying to get rid of client work and do muse-only activities instead. My muses don't require the most advanced SEO skills, and my skillset is already perfectly fine for my own use. Honing those particular skills further simply isn't the most efficient use of my time.

The same might apply to you - if your muse requires you to be actively working on it and be up to date with the world, it sounds more like a job than a muse.

[Sven]

I do not use feeds (do have to learn how to send them...) Instead I visit sites when I want to visit them. Probably saves me a lot of time compared to visiting any feed that I would get.

But I do feel that wandering the internet is part of what I do so I sort of must do it.

[tbone2345]

The same might apply to you - if your muse requires you to be actively working on it and be up to date with the world, it sounds more like a job than a muse.

I disagree....it depends on whether being up to date is going to give your muse a competitive advantage...

check out this article i came accross today

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/toward-a-new-vision-of-productivity-part-5-drowning-in-information.html

[sub8hr]

Funny, I subscribed to feeds to save me the time of going around to different sites--I just keep it to a bare minimum of what I actually want to read and only look at the feeds when I'm ready to read.

[angelmask]

I'd also argue with the notion that directors watch movies, musicians listen to a lot of music, writers read a lot of books...

While some do, many of the best simply don't:

Jeffrey Gitomer (www.gitomer.com) writes sales training literature (the best in the world, I think), but doesn't read any sales lit. for fear of accidentally ripping it off.

Robert Pirsig (author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) suggests that if you want to be a philosopher, the last thing you should do is read philosophy.

Beethoven's music got progressively more daring and innovative as he went deaf (and was thus unable to hear new music from other composers)



Yes, yes- there is the other hand (I, for one, write better music during periods of frequent exposure to new music); I'm just suggesting that the basic assumption should be questioned anew for each individual (for yourself)...


Also
I'd be willing to guess that most "keeping up with the industry" activity falls into some sort of 80/20 rule.

[reapr]

I could support Tims view here.

I do a lot of internet marketing and without trying to sound arrogant I have to make the following comments.

The more I know and the more successful I become the less I listen to the gurus and so called experts.

Now don't get me wrong here you can always learn from someone that is above you on the curve but I am finding more value in my own abilities to be a success and think on my own.

Now with that being said I am starting to understand why the best do not allow themselves to be exposed to others in their field.

[Free4Family&Community]

I never thought about cutting down on my reading. I know that I need to cut down on my researching on things. For some unknown reason I feel that research will come to an end with a definate conclusion about what to do about something. I now know that I have to stop at some point. I am working on reducing my researching.

[kamakiri]

@free4 - I had the same problem a while back. 2 Months in the hospital fixed it, because I read a book a day. I realized that I had read a lot, and forgot a lot of it. Most information sounds new when you read it, but when you read the same types of books, at the pace of a book a day, you realize how similar the stuff really is.

I still do a lot of reading, but I have added in another habit of Tim's, to read an hour of fiction every night. Great for relaxation.