I’ve been obsessed with the idea of maximizing how much knowledge I can take in and retain ever since seeing these clips, one about Bobby Axelrod from the show, “Billions”, and the other, of Elon Musk. I wasn’t able to find the original video, but there’s one out there somewhere of him talking about consuming as much knowledge as possible.
Bruce Wayne would have to be doing a lot of research and intelligence gathering, both for staying relevant as CEO, and gathering info on criminals. This got me thinking, “How can I both optimize information flow so that it naturally flows to me, and then how can I consume as much of it as possible?”
- Setting up Google News – Google news allow you to customize your interests and create a ‘daily briefing’ of everything you’ve shown interest in. I downloaded the app and curated my feed to show me articles on the following topics:
- Renewable Energy
- Energy
- Energy Exploration Technologies
- Pharmaceutical Industry
- Health Care
- Technology
- Law
- U.S Securities and Exchange Commission
- Currency
- Geopolitics
- Palantir Technologies
- Economic Growth
- Stock Market
- Downloading Libby and Goodreads – Libby allows you to access public library’s physical and more importantly, digital products. I say that because I believe that listening to audiobooks other audio format media is more efficient that reading the physical versions. For example, I can listen to an audiobook while running, but I can’t read at book. I use Libby to place holds and listen to the books, while using Goodreads to log all the future books I want to read and track my progress on how many I’ve already read.
- Listening to audiobooks – my far off goal is to be able to consume a book a day via audio. This might seem like an impossible task if I plan to do anything but reading in my day, until you think of how much time you spend a day listening to music or not actually using your ears. While concentrating on challenging tasks might make listening to an audiobook at the same time fruitless, there’s a lot of time in each day when we’re not actively using our ears. I plan to try to incorporate my daily book into some of the time spent working out, running, commuting to and from work, and pretty much any time spent walking or moving around. The beauty of audiobooks is they leave your hands free to do something completely unrelated. For the past week, I’ve been slowing spending more and more time on my commute listening to an audiobook while also working out my forearms with Captains of Crush, which I carry around in my briefcase. This allows me to save an exponential amount of time. I’m currently still looking for a day job, and if this ends up being something monotonous in security, I’ll be spending the entire shift listening to naturals to progress my knowledge and skill set.
- Collecting as many library cards as possible – Having multiple cards across different library systems can be extremely beneficial. If a book isn’t available in one library system, or has a long wait list, you can simply switch to a different system. I spent one day this week after work traveling to all the nearby major city libraries, ending in me amassing 4 different cards.
- Reading the newspaper – This is a tried and true way of staying to date on current events. I’m not sure If I’ll be doing this with a physical paper. Although I do prefer holding the physical paper as to listening to it or reading it digitally, there’s much more efficiency in listening to it. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to do this or get the physical copies in person for as cheap as possible.
- Optimizing iphone – I spent a lot of time a day on my phone and use to spend even more time doing useless things to kill time. Recently, I went through my phone and deleted any apps that I didn’t actively use. I also organized all my apps as best I could, and created a story of information center page on the far left app screen, as well as added some useful widgets to my home screen. This ‘information center’ is simply a screen with quick snapshots of information that I need quick access to. I expect it’ll change as I delve further into time management and pick up other endeavors, but at the moment it has a stocks widget (showing only ones I’m invested in), a Google Calendar widget, which shows me the days events scheduled, Google News (as discussed above), and MyFitnessPal, showing me home cub calories I’ve consumed already and how much I have left. My home screen also has the stocks widget and MyFitnessPal, as well as a widget for gmail.
- Optimizing inbox – something I do everyday is check all of my inboxes. For the longest time, my inbox was flooded with junk emails and subscriptions, making it harder to find information. That I really needed and to organize. I recently heard that Elon Musk uses some sort of proprietary email that only allows for extremely important messages to form though and want to do something similar. I used a service that scanned my inbox abs automatically unsubscribed me from over 100 unwanted lists (I can’t remember what it was called, but will link it here later if so do remember). My inbox is much cleaner now, and when junk mail does find its way though Is manageable and I’m able to slowly unsubscribe from anything that the service missed.
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