It's Not What You Read, It's What You Ignore

Want some time management inspiration? You may want to watch this presentation by Scott Hanselman: It's Not What You Read, It's What You Ignore.

This was presented at a technical conference, and during the first six minutes or so (and at various other times throughout the talk) there may be references that don't make sense out of context, or to a non-technical viewer. But there's still an awful lot of good stuff in here.


Dealing with all that stuff we want to read, or feel we need to read to "keep up"

As someone who follows about 200 blogs in my RSS reader, and has too often had the "unread" count in Google Reader show 1000+, I very much related to this: "Take all your news feeds and audit them for noise. 1000+ is no way to live." And, in fact, since watching this presentation, I've unsubscribed from some of those blogs, and I've removed some people from my "follow" list on Twitter.

On a related point, Scott speaks about the "Great Obelisk of Shame" — that huge reading pile that you know you'll never get to. For those of us who tend to be information junkies — in paper form, digital form, or both — he suggests we ask ourselves this: "What's the minimum amount I need to know?"


Multitasking

Scott says that, in general, "Humans are not supposed to multitask. ... When people multitask, bad things happen."

But you can do some things at the same time, including:
- Walk and chew gum.
- Workout and listen to podcasts, or watch TV shows on your iPad.
- Commute and think.


And more

Scott touches on much more: e-mail filters, the Pomodoro Technique, Instapaper for read-later items, etc.

But it comes down to this: "What can you throw out, what can you ignore, what can you stop doing in your life?" Scott encourages us to throw out anything that's not helping us improve our lives, moving us toward our goals.

[Found via Lifehacker]