Comments on: My name is Kyle, and I’m an Infoholic http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/04/infoholic/ Kyle Cordes's Software Site Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:13:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.11 by: Christopher Mahan http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/04/infoholic/#comment-11012 Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:25:22 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/04/infoholic/#comment-11012 The problem with information is that it's needed to make good decisions, and making good decisions is important for delivering good products instead of useless crap. I think they key is that one must learn to recognize useless information from important information, and consume more of the important type. Arguably dropping the useless information is going to make more time for producing, but unless one has looked at a lot of information, one might not know what information is important. The 80/20 problem. The problem with information is that it’s needed to make good decisions, and making good decisions is important for delivering good products instead of useless crap. I think they key is that one must learn to recognize useless information from important information, and consume more of the important type. Arguably dropping the useless information is going to make more time for producing, but unless one has looked at a lot of information, one might not know what information is important. The 80/20 problem.

]]> by: David Hagler http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/04/infoholic/#comment-10923 Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:49:10 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/04/infoholic/#comment-10923 I have to admit, I'm an infoholic too. Perhaps we should start an IAA for the people addicted to information. All jocularity aside, I used to sorta have a pride in the amount of information I collected, how many blogs I read, the amount of information that stored. Those are all signs of OCD style problem. Over the weekend, I was home alone, the house was clean, and I had very few projects on my plate that required attention, all of it was really just needing some "thinking" time. I sat down and started reading some articles. The problem being that I use an rss reader (google reader) - and its like I feel compelled to read through it .... all of it And to my astonishment, I think I spent all of saturday reading digg :D . I looked back at my logs, and over sat. and sun. I've read through or briefly skimmed almost 400 articles, yes .. 400 - I thought about compiling a list and figuring out how relevent most of it was. A significant part of it was associated to some problems I was trying to solve in a web project. Quite a lot of it was devoted to AJAX, PHP, CSS, DHML and DOM. So I'm glad that I absorbed information that was or could be relevant, but I realized I'm more addicted to entertainment news that I'd like to admitt. ( I mean seriously, who cares about Lindsey Lohan? ) - some off hand calculations showed that about 40% of it was development related, 20% randon nonsensical information from hollywood, 20% or so associated with technology of sorts, robotics/electronics. the last 20% was devoted to random stuff, funny youtube videos', some articles on quantum physics. etc. I believe this is related to some odd compulsion to keep up - But then I was asked by someone about a bridge collapse. I didn't even know a bridge had collapsed - let alone a major bridge, that collapse for no apparent reason. So truthfully you can't keep up with it all, only a minor glipse of what is out there can actually be monitored. I recently started trimming and filtering my rss feeds. That will help during the interim time, but I'm not sure what the next step would be. I have to admit, I’m an infoholic too. Perhaps we should start an IAA for the people addicted to information. All jocularity aside, I used to sorta have a pride in the amount of information I collected, how many blogs I read, the amount of information that stored. Those are all signs of OCD style problem. Over the weekend, I was home alone, the house was clean, and I had very few projects on my plate that required attention, all of it was really just needing some “thinking” time. I sat down and started reading some articles. The problem being that I use an rss reader (google reader) - and its like I feel compelled to read through it …. all of it And to my astonishment, I think I spent all of saturday reading digg :D .

I looked back at my logs, and over sat. and sun. I’ve read through or briefly skimmed almost 400 articles, yes .. 400 - I thought about compiling a list and figuring out how relevent most of it was. A significant part of it was associated to some problems I was trying to solve in a web project. Quite a lot of it was devoted to AJAX, PHP, CSS, DHML and DOM. So I’m glad that I absorbed information that was or could be relevant, but I realized I’m more addicted to entertainment news that I’d like to admitt. ( I mean seriously, who cares about Lindsey Lohan? ) - some off hand calculations showed that about 40% of it was development related, 20% randon nonsensical information from hollywood, 20% or so associated with technology of sorts, robotics/electronics. the last 20% was devoted to random stuff, funny youtube videos’, some articles on quantum physics. etc.

I believe this is related to some odd compulsion to keep up - But then I was asked by someone about a bridge collapse. I didn’t even know a bridge had collapsed - let alone a major bridge, that collapse for no apparent reason. So truthfully you can’t keep up with it all, only a minor glipse of what is out there can actually be monitored. I recently started trimming and filtering my rss feeds. That will help during the interim time, but I’m not sure what the next step would be.

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