Diving Deep in an Age of Endless Information

The more information that’s pushed onto us, the less we understand about the world.

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We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.

E.O. Wilson

In a world as big as ours there is a lot going on.

As more and more of what goes on in the world becomes easily accessible for everyone, there is more to pay attention to now than ever before.

With so much to pay attention to we’re not able to fully appreciate everything we’re involved in or understand everything we develop an opinion about.

This amount of information was unheard of even as few as 20 years ago.

The volume of information we’re exposed to has been increasing exponentially, but the depth of our understanding of any one topic is decreasing rapidly.

A Mile Wide But An Inch Deep

We’re expected to understand and discuss all the topics that slip into the mainstream.

As a result, we make conclusions and decisions based on incomplete information.

How can we possibly stay informed on 10+ professional sports leagues, several complex global conflicts, countless Netflix series, all the activities of our friends and family, and all of the “breaking” news across the country and the world that is pushed onto us from all angles?

Most conversations and discourse we’re involved in are woefully under-informed.

We’re even losing enjoyment in the hobbies and passions we care about most because there are too many other things to “stay informed on” that prevent us from going deep on the things we love most.

In our quest to stay informed about everything happening across an entire planet, we’ve forgotten entirely what informed means.

Prioritizing headlines and buzzwords over context and comprehension has led us having the most information we’ve ever had, but the least amount of understanding.

Choosing Our Battles

Refocusing our efforts on context and comprehension will help us enjoy our passions more and stay informed about things that are important to us.

Prioritizing context and comprehension requires that we forget any attempts to stay up to date.

Instead of watching the news or scrolling on social media we might listen to a podcast or read a blog about our favorite spots team before tuning into the game.

The additional context about the players, teams, and matchups will make the game that much more enjoyable.

Instead of listening to 3rd party sources with their own agenda present us with important information, we might seek out primary source accounts to form our own opinion.

Challenging ourselves to review the source material and understand enough about something to form our own opinion signals that it’s important to us and ensures we comprehend what’s going on before discussing it with others.

Forgetting about our attempts to stay up to date on everything being pushed onto us requires we carefully choose what to spend our time on.

We don’t have unlimited resources to dive deep into everything, so we need to develop the conviction to dive deep into a few things we care about and ignore everything else.

When someone asks us about something we haven’t intentionally put on our radar, we need to be okay with not just having no understanding about it, but maybe having never even heard of it.

The deeper we dive into the most important things in our lives, the more we can enjoy them, understand them, and discuss them with confidence and poise.

Prompts

1. When have you felt overwhelmed in recent memory? What caused these feelings?

2. Does your intake of information lean towards depth or breadth?

3. If you were to intentionally go deep on a few things what would they be and where would you get your information?

Deep Dive

• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Cal Newport

  • A classic read detailing the value of practicing depth in a world increasingly focused on the shallows.

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Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.

Kevin