How to Make Sense Out of Too Much

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Make Yourself an Intelligent Reader

Competencies: self-development, managing self

Who benefits: everyone

Consultant Usage: personal development

What’s it about? Today’s post moves away from the general topics we usually cover to alert you to an important book that all citizens of any country should read. 

When I was going to school (trudging 5 miles through the snow …) the hardest thing about any school assignment was finding information on the topic.  Back then we had these things called “encyclopedias”.  They were so essential that there were actually people who went door-to-door to sell them.  The amazing thing was … families bought them.  The salesman (back then they were all salesmen) would come with Volume 1.  Volumes 2 – 24 would come over time and families would be the proud owners of hundreds of pounds of information, much of it obsolete by the time it arrived.

One could also trudge over to the library and possibly find a few magazine articles or books on the particular subject one was studying. 

Today’s teens and young adults don’t know much about that life style.  They can access just about everything that has ever been written, said or done on a little box like object that sits on their lap and weighs 10 pounds or less.

Today’s problem for all of us isn’t finding information.  It is finding reliable, verifiable, accurate information in the morass of chatter and babble that invades us daily.  Today’s highly recommended and new book, Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload, addresses that issue.

The book is written primarily for journalists.  It is however a book for all of us.  We need to be better interpreters of what is put before us.  The books focuses on what the authors call the Six Essential Tools for Interpreting the News: 

1. What kind of content am I encountering?
2. Is the information complete? If not, what’s missing?
3. Who or what are the sources and why should I believe them?
4. What evidence is presented and how was it tested or vetted?
5. What might be an alternative explanation or understanding?
6. Am I learning what I need?

You normally wouldn’t think to acquire a book of this nature.  But if you are inclined to be a fully developed, well educated person who values personal growth, this book will make a valuable contribution to your ability to deal with Information Overload.

Catch you later.
[tags]information overload, age of information overload, personal growth, managing self, self development, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.