The NEW Information Diet, part 1

by Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen)

Hi, I’m Sterling and I am an information addict.

(HI STERLING)

It’s been 6 years since I have watched a traditional news program, 5 years since I’ve watched an entertainment gossip show, 4 year since I’ve watched live television and nearly 3 weeks since I have read over 50 blogs a week, listened to all of the 25+ podcasts I was subscribed too, unsubscribed to the 30+ email newsletters, and stopped consuming info like it was going out of style. I have truly been more effective and more happy since this massive info dump.

I wrote the original Info Diet, part 1 post 3 years ago, and I thought it was time for an update and a process you can use to stop information overwhelm.

The original cause for this info dump was ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’ by Tim Ferriss. That book has been the second most influential book I have ever read, the first being the “6 Pillar of Self Esteem” by Nathanial Branden. ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’ helped me with a lot of mindset shifts, but one of them was how important my time was. I was working 12 hours per day, minimum, 7 days a week and I started to check on why that was. I found that the info diet cut that down considerably! I had been an info addict my entire life, until about 3 years ago. I talk more about that in the original Info Diet post, but here I wanted to talk about the upsides of that diet.

For the last 3 years I stayed to that info diet pretty much completely. From time to time I would go crazy with the podcasts or the internet marketing courses I didn’t need yet, but I actually stuck to it on the whole. What has come from it has been amazing.

Unclogging the Action drain

Before having a specific info diet process, I would start a topic, somehow get distracted by 3 or 10 or 23 other topics and never finish the first topic.

Being so distracted lead to complete lack of focus and of action, which was very frustrating. Processing information that way was also very overwhelming as the info would just keep coming and coming and I didn’t have any way to process how I was going to take that info in!

Once I decided to cut out the massive clog of information, I was able to make a process for bring in information. I was able to pick a few topics and completely focus on them from start to finish.

The Process

In the next part of this series I’m going to show you the exact process I go through to find and act on any info I’m looking for. My hope is that you will be able to use this process to cut down on the overwhelm of information flowing into your mind and then focus on the correct info that can be acted on.

Go to The NEW Information Diet, part 2

Question: Do you find yourself constantly rushing for one bit of knowledge to another without taking action? How have you found ways to stop that cycle?

Categories: 4-Hour Workweek, General Updates, Mindset for Success, Productivity

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38 Comments For This Post

Carlos Says:

I totally agree with you.
For the last 4 years I’ve hardly seen any TV (and that’s been great!!) Then i had a lot more time to spend reading blogs, books, listening to podcasts…until i became pretty comfortable with all this internet marketing business.

But now i’m still hanging to this info overload and i need to cut out time there in order to be more productive.

Looking forward to your next posts about the topic.
Cheers
Carlos

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