TOW#592 — Usable/Useful information
I recently realised that I receive over 50 newsletters a week; some that I signed up for years ago, some new ones, some that all of us get in our inbox… and though I’m interested in all of them, if I were to start reading them all every week then my working days would be spent only on that. I probably wouldn’t have any space left for the information I get from colleagues, which is also usable and useful.
To top it off, I’ve got a folder on my computer that receives educational e-mails, and when I saw that it had over 100 unread messages in it I told myself that I had to get things in order.
I’d like to share with you what I did, maybe somebody will find it helpful. Of course, I first did some research on this issue before implementing my changes:
• Useful vs usable — let’s face it, all information is useful, but it doesn’t necessarily means it’s usable. Depending on what stage you’re at, but especially at the beginning and middle of the development, you need the most usable information, while the useful information isn’t as crucial right now!
• Read now or later — the next classification is about the urgency of the things you receive. There are some things that should be read right away, because the information you get from them could help you with your progress. For others, you may need to find another time to read them, as long as they’re still usable or useful information.
• Information selection — here I mean the sources of the information you’re getting. It’s just that at one point I realised that some of the newsletters I’d signed up for were interesting at one time, but no longer. So I immediately put them into another category, so that new usable and useful info can come in their place!
• Unsubscribe — something you probably need to do. I did my own research (very easy, just opened my deleted messages folder) and saw which messages I delete automatically as soon as they arrive. So the first thing I did is clicked that button at the bottom on all of them. Then I looked at all the stuff I receive and made a selection according to the above parameters, and unsubscribed from what I don’t need right now! If only you saw the kinds of things I’d signed up for…embarrassing ☺☺☺.
After you’ve done all of the above, the next phase is sharing. As I said, I receive a million ‘useful’ pieces of information, but I also send. I used to send everything, because there’s a need for everything, right? However, after implementing the ‘purge’, I did the same with my sharing. I don’t share every piece of information with everyone anymore. Not that I don’t want to or I’m hoarding it all for myself, but I know what it was like for me, so it’s probably the same for those that I’m sharing with. So now I only share with someone if I think something is really useful for them (yes, I know that it’s based on my intuition or my choice, but that’s how it is). As a result, ‘forward’ is no longer my most used button ☺.
And just to be clear, here I’m talking about general useful information that we receive from all sorts of electronic sources, but what about all the information we collect every day for the development of our brands and which is VERY useful for many people??
Wishing you success with the changes to come,
@kalinbabusku
Member of the Team
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