David Epstein

There's so much information coming at you.

And I think it's a constant question of, I'm curious, I want to learn things, but how can I stay sane?

And I mentioned, I described this in one genetics lab in the book where they take Post-it notes and put them on the wall and each one representing one of their current commitments or projects.

And the first thing that happens is once they put them on the wall, so making all their current commitments visual, is they realize that,

There's way more than they could ever get done already in process.

And so immediately they see it and say, we have to start moving some of this stuff out or we'll never get anything done.

And they have like a hopper where they don't say, we don't have to just throw that idea out the window.

We can put it in a holding place, but it's backburnered, right?

And then they implement this rule where you can't start a new project in the funnel unless one moves out of the funnel, right?

So it's contained.

So they're making these choices about what not to do.

And some of those things that they decide not to do may be good ideas, but it doesn't matter because they weren't going to get to anything if they had all these ideas.

And I kind of took that and did that for myself because I thought that idea of making all your current commitments visible was really interesting.

And I did the same thing for my own commitments.

And you immediately realize, you immediately start looking at it and saying, this is a lot of stuff and these ones are a lot more important than those ones.

And I like all of these.

And if there were 10 of me, I'd be happy to do all of them, but there aren't.

And so it forces you to kind of prioritize.

And then I did the same thing with my information diet where I logged all the sources over a month that I turned to, did the post-its on the wall, said, which of these do I feel was worthwhile and kept that in.

And then occasionally new sources come in and then I'll move something else out of the funnel and it builds up, you know, so I have to kind of do it regularly.