New terms and concepts that I learnt about from this post that I've certainly felt and experienced but didn't know of. I like the graphics that go with it. Can't help but think this is a dense piece so grateful for the recording, as it was more digestible for me. But the piece I keep returning to is the decision fatigue. Is that even a thing? I had no idea but have certainly felt it many a times. How does one go back to avoiding decision fatigue? I'll definitely link this post in my weekly SPAWN session and bring more attention to this post.
I'm glad the recording is valuable! And yes, decision fatigue is certainly an issue. Managing it all depends on what's going on in your life. I had a friend who was always stressed about what they were going to wear because she felt like she had to 'keep up' with the styles. From shopping to dressing to everything it was one decision after another. Finally she sat down and decided she didn't care about that anymore and stopped.
What I mean to say here is that sometimes our decision fatigue is self inflicted by putting too much importance on trivial things which then requires significant decision making. When we reduce the importance, we also reduce the number of critical decisions which helps reduce fatigue.
How liberating it is to feel like what you wear is not that important, on a day to day basis. Then again in certain situations and work environment, you are obliged to be dressed smart and you cannot turn up in sneakers. It takes time to get to that level where you don’t care but still turn up decent! I think the problem, might be that there is so much intake that it gets hard to decide when, where and if at all go out, meet someone for coffee or go on holiday because it gets too much with all the info overload that comes our way. The recording was indeed very professionally made and helped me get to the core. Thank you!
It's a real thing. When I became a manger, my day filled with people coming to me to make decisions. I find that I generally no longer have the capacity to make said decisions after noon. The "System 2" of the brain gets depleted.
This is where decision centric with planned decisions and delegation of noise is highly useful. I do this as a manager and instead of trying to get a decision with poor or noisy data, my team tries to get good data that will answer an agreed to question or hypothesis. 80% of the time, when they get the right data, the decision makes itself and all they have to do is share their findings and tell me which way they are headed.
It’s hard enough when it affects the private life but when it goes to affect you professionally that must be difficult. Are you experiencing this out of work too?
Great post. Looking forward to following up on all your links (I saved them to a Notion page).
Learning the fundamentals of information theory was a helpful filter for me. Treat information seeking as seeking to reduce uncertainty about a statement of fact (a proposition, in analytic philosophy terms), or about a decision you need to make. The first information you collect is highly impactful, but as you seek more and more information the impact on the truth/falsity judgment of the statement of fact or decision is less and lessmThat means there is a limit to the amount of information you need to collect, due to declining marginal utility.
As a simple example, consider figuring out whether to bring a coat when you go out in the afternoon. You check the sky, you feel the air outside, and you check a weather service. Then you're done: you know enough to decide, and your only further query might be about what specific cost to bring (windbreaker or raincoat).
Fantastic! And what you described I've also heard as Decision Centric XXX. DARPA came up with a concept they call decision centric warfare and I helped develop a program management concept called decision point planning. The concept is identical to what you describe.
In the warfare example, it counters our current network-centric which becomes information centric. Clearly, more information in battle isn't always helpful (it stems from a misunderstanding of the OODA loop with a heavy emphasis on the first O) Worse, more information leads to more consolidation and centralization and then.... infobesity and an inability to actually make decisions.
One of the best models I've seen to counter OODA and to frame out the decision centric approach is called the CECA (critique, evaluable, compare, and adapt, where you start with they hypothesis of sorts and then work to confirm/disconfirm with new information so you can adapt. More here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA605875
I like the framework of a diet. It needs to be the right amount of food: if you're an active information-seeker, you can "eat" more, because you "burn more calories", but there is a limit even for people who enjoy consuming a lot of information. Believing that you are somehow above the fray of all this is where smart people really fall into this trap.
Some of the dumbest people I know are really smart.
Believing we are above the fray is not smart. I like the way you talk about consumption and processing. If we consume more we have to exersise our brains more to process it properly. It's the problem that AI has in that if you feed it too much, it takes a lot longer to process and often has errors. If you feed it the right information it gives better results.
I tend to take new year's goals very seriously. A few years back, my whole goal for the year was to do fewer things, but with greater consequence. I have never looked back and probably will never return to the frenetic level of activity of my 30s and early 40s, and that's a very good thing. I think that applies doubly to the stuff we put into our brains!
I have a question.... One thing that I find difficult about being intentional and curating information is that the line between nonsense and reason is blurry. There is so much information out there, even here on Substack that’s contradictory and not necessarily nefariously, just perspectives mixed with cherry picking etc. As someone who is a generalist, how do I balance curiosity and exploration without getting overwhelmed?
That's a great question and one that deserves it's own essay. Fundamentally there's no 'easy' answer. It's also not a new problem per se. The quality and accuracy of information has always been a problem due to politics / beliefs.
It's also not a comfortable place to be because there's so much rubbish from the experts and so much gold from the dissidents and vice versa.
The best recommendation I have is in this essay on Critical Thinking. It's a function of knowledge gathering, logical forming, informing, and reforming ideas and then the diligent application of critique.
For the curious mind, this manifests as learning, unlearning, and relearning. It's ok to be wrong but when you find new information, it's better to continually update.
This piece could not have been more timely, as it arrived in my inbox just as I had concluded a week of curtailing my media consumption. Thank you. I also weaved a bit of your post into the blog entry I was working on yesterday and this morning, as it was so timely and relevant. https://andrewcareaga.com/2024/09/23/a-week-without-news/
That's awesome to hear and I loved your blog. I've never watched the news and almost 15 years ago, when the socials were exploding, I intentionally did not engage with Twitter and spent time curating my feeds and my e-mails. It's to the point now that between 1440 and the Freepress along with a diet of other non-news reading, I'm honestly better aprised of the real world that many who gorge daily.
I think you'll find, that as you continue the 'diet' you'll see a lot more than just the loss of noise but also the improved signal of *real* life. 🙂
Thanks for responding. I’m a late-era Baby Boomer (born 1960) who grew up when mainstream media was essentially all we had — three TV networks and a local newspaper and radio station. I studied journalism worked in the field for a time before moving
Into PR and marketing. I’ve been a news junkie for a long time so it’s a hard habit to break. But the world of journalism has changed remarkably over the years, and not all for the better. Even alternative sources like The Free Press, which is a terrific resource, have their shortcomings. The Neutral is similar to 1440 in that it attempts to present an impartial view of the news, but as I learned long ago in journalism school, and as your article reminds us, none of us can escape the realities of bias.
I was more aiming for a 'de-algorithm' sort of thing 🙂. I'm glad you found it helpful. I find myself considering that daily when I engage with social media.
New terms and concepts that I learnt about from this post that I've certainly felt and experienced but didn't know of. I like the graphics that go with it. Can't help but think this is a dense piece so grateful for the recording, as it was more digestible for me. But the piece I keep returning to is the decision fatigue. Is that even a thing? I had no idea but have certainly felt it many a times. How does one go back to avoiding decision fatigue? I'll definitely link this post in my weekly SPAWN session and bring more attention to this post.
I'm glad the recording is valuable! And yes, decision fatigue is certainly an issue. Managing it all depends on what's going on in your life. I had a friend who was always stressed about what they were going to wear because she felt like she had to 'keep up' with the styles. From shopping to dressing to everything it was one decision after another. Finally she sat down and decided she didn't care about that anymore and stopped.
What I mean to say here is that sometimes our decision fatigue is self inflicted by putting too much importance on trivial things which then requires significant decision making. When we reduce the importance, we also reduce the number of critical decisions which helps reduce fatigue.
Just a couple quick thoughts on your question.
How liberating it is to feel like what you wear is not that important, on a day to day basis. Then again in certain situations and work environment, you are obliged to be dressed smart and you cannot turn up in sneakers. It takes time to get to that level where you don’t care but still turn up decent! I think the problem, might be that there is so much intake that it gets hard to decide when, where and if at all go out, meet someone for coffee or go on holiday because it gets too much with all the info overload that comes our way. The recording was indeed very professionally made and helped me get to the core. Thank you!
It's a real thing. When I became a manger, my day filled with people coming to me to make decisions. I find that I generally no longer have the capacity to make said decisions after noon. The "System 2" of the brain gets depleted.
This is where decision centric with planned decisions and delegation of noise is highly useful. I do this as a manager and instead of trying to get a decision with poor or noisy data, my team tries to get good data that will answer an agreed to question or hypothesis. 80% of the time, when they get the right data, the decision makes itself and all they have to do is share their findings and tell me which way they are headed.
It’s hard enough when it affects the private life but when it goes to affect you professionally that must be difficult. Are you experiencing this out of work too?
Great post. Looking forward to following up on all your links (I saved them to a Notion page).
Learning the fundamentals of information theory was a helpful filter for me. Treat information seeking as seeking to reduce uncertainty about a statement of fact (a proposition, in analytic philosophy terms), or about a decision you need to make. The first information you collect is highly impactful, but as you seek more and more information the impact on the truth/falsity judgment of the statement of fact or decision is less and lessmThat means there is a limit to the amount of information you need to collect, due to declining marginal utility.
As a simple example, consider figuring out whether to bring a coat when you go out in the afternoon. You check the sky, you feel the air outside, and you check a weather service. Then you're done: you know enough to decide, and your only further query might be about what specific cost to bring (windbreaker or raincoat).
Fantastic! And what you described I've also heard as Decision Centric XXX. DARPA came up with a concept they call decision centric warfare and I helped develop a program management concept called decision point planning. The concept is identical to what you describe.
In the warfare example, it counters our current network-centric which becomes information centric. Clearly, more information in battle isn't always helpful (it stems from a misunderstanding of the OODA loop with a heavy emphasis on the first O) Worse, more information leads to more consolidation and centralization and then.... infobesity and an inability to actually make decisions.
One of the best models I've seen to counter OODA and to frame out the decision centric approach is called the CECA (critique, evaluable, compare, and adapt, where you start with they hypothesis of sorts and then work to confirm/disconfirm with new information so you can adapt. More here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA605875
Fantastic insight! I hadn't thought of Twitter quite like that.
And when you do, you can't unthink it and suddenly the polarization makes so much more sense.
Absolutely true!
I like the framework of a diet. It needs to be the right amount of food: if you're an active information-seeker, you can "eat" more, because you "burn more calories", but there is a limit even for people who enjoy consuming a lot of information. Believing that you are somehow above the fray of all this is where smart people really fall into this trap.
Some of the dumbest people I know are really smart.
Believing we are above the fray is not smart. I like the way you talk about consumption and processing. If we consume more we have to exersise our brains more to process it properly. It's the problem that AI has in that if you feed it too much, it takes a lot longer to process and often has errors. If you feed it the right information it gives better results.
I tend to take new year's goals very seriously. A few years back, my whole goal for the year was to do fewer things, but with greater consequence. I have never looked back and probably will never return to the frenetic level of activity of my 30s and early 40s, and that's a very good thing. I think that applies doubly to the stuff we put into our brains!
Also, I deleted one of my (duplicate) comments. Not sure where that came from!
I have a question.... One thing that I find difficult about being intentional and curating information is that the line between nonsense and reason is blurry. There is so much information out there, even here on Substack that’s contradictory and not necessarily nefariously, just perspectives mixed with cherry picking etc. As someone who is a generalist, how do I balance curiosity and exploration without getting overwhelmed?
That's a great question and one that deserves it's own essay. Fundamentally there's no 'easy' answer. It's also not a new problem per se. The quality and accuracy of information has always been a problem due to politics / beliefs.
It's also not a comfortable place to be because there's so much rubbish from the experts and so much gold from the dissidents and vice versa.
The best recommendation I have is in this essay on Critical Thinking. It's a function of knowledge gathering, logical forming, informing, and reforming ideas and then the diligent application of critique.
For the curious mind, this manifests as learning, unlearning, and relearning. It's ok to be wrong but when you find new information, it's better to continually update.
Welcome to the community of curious thinkers.
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/do-you-really-think-critically
This piece could not have been more timely, as it arrived in my inbox just as I had concluded a week of curtailing my media consumption. Thank you. I also weaved a bit of your post into the blog entry I was working on yesterday and this morning, as it was so timely and relevant. https://andrewcareaga.com/2024/09/23/a-week-without-news/
That's awesome to hear and I loved your blog. I've never watched the news and almost 15 years ago, when the socials were exploding, I intentionally did not engage with Twitter and spent time curating my feeds and my e-mails. It's to the point now that between 1440 and the Freepress along with a diet of other non-news reading, I'm honestly better aprised of the real world that many who gorge daily.
I think you'll find, that as you continue the 'diet' you'll see a lot more than just the loss of noise but also the improved signal of *real* life. 🙂
Thanks for responding. I’m a late-era Baby Boomer (born 1960) who grew up when mainstream media was essentially all we had — three TV networks and a local newspaper and radio station. I studied journalism worked in the field for a time before moving
Into PR and marketing. I’ve been a news junkie for a long time so it’s a hard habit to break. But the world of journalism has changed remarkably over the years, and not all for the better. Even alternative sources like The Free Press, which is a terrific resource, have their shortcomings. The Neutral is similar to 1440 in that it attempts to present an impartial view of the news, but as I learned long ago in journalism school, and as your article reminds us, none of us can escape the realities of bias.
You succinctly explain the problem with platforms like Twitter. I don’t think I have ever read a more apt illustration.
This is the third or so article I have read this morning that discusses algorithms, it must be an algorithm sort of day.
I was more aiming for a 'de-algorithm' sort of thing 🙂. I'm glad you found it helpful. I find myself considering that daily when I engage with social media.