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The Cost of Being an Information Junkie

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“Hello I’m Joseph and I’m an Information Junkie …”

It’s an interesting thing being addicted to information … especially as an information producer.

Let me back up for a moment, and then I’ll get to my point …

 

The Life of an Information Junkie …

An information junkie consumes and collects information like an alcoholic consumes and collects alcohol. While the cost to one’s liver may be less the cost to one’s pocket may not. This is especially true in today’s digital environment … and compounded by the advent of Internet purchasing.

First, of all there are so many ways to collect information … text, audio, video, live events, recorded events … you name it, it’s out there!

Second, it’s all viable and much of it is valuable … if you use a bit of discretion on your sources and your selections.

Third, all of it takes time and energy to consume, much of it has a cost to consume or collect … and some of it demands the commitment of a curator to keep.

It’s the third category that creates the quandary for me … the time, energy, money and space commitments.

I get two huge benefits from my addiction … 1) I gain valuable information and sometimes valuable insight, and 2) I get tremendous entertainment value from just about all of it.

However … those benefits come with a cost as I’ve pointed out … and keeping the cost in line with the benefit has only come to me slowly.

I’ve been a voracious reader for many, many years … several hundred books a year. Plus I read many magazines, an occasional newspaper (usually only when I’m traveling these days) and innumerable white papers, journals and professional articles … and then there’s the on-line forum, where not only am I reading and gathering … I’m also responding.

My argument (mostly to myself) is that I “need” to consume information at this rate and level to keep up. HECK, I’m an information creator and provider. I make my living off of selling information in the form of expertise and experience (i.e.: some of my use of information is to create experiential interactions that provide enormous value beyond the intellectual to my clients).

To some extent … even a great extent … that’s true; I need to consume more than the average person a great deal of information to keep up and move forward.

However, fessing up to the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth … I’ve got to say I go beyond what I need, way into what I want.

The whole truth is that I love information!

For me, and other information junkies, information is as alive as any growing, breathing, moving thing …

I follow information the way a tracker would follow quarry. I recognize that information lives historically in what has been done and in the future as well in what hasn’t been done yet. The excitement is in picking up the trail …

That’s in part why I have a personal library of over 10,000 books (heck … I’m approaching 100o in just my Kindle collection!).

I have dozens of magazine subscriptions … most of which are digital these days (keeping the trees alive has come to mean something to me).

I have on-line subscriptions to more than a dozen information-based services, e.g.: HighBeam Research, DeepDyve …

I have on-line or physical subscriptions to the major professional journals I read regularly (mostly neuroscience or cognitive science these days, but I keep a few subscriptions to philosophy and psychology journals going t00).

I participate in a number of on-line forums for professionals in my areas of interest …

And, of course I publish and present my ideas regularly as well …

It’s enough to keep me busy … but it’s because of the way all the information interconnects for me that I keep doing it.

THINK … Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code.

It’s kind of like being an information detective … and you need the source material to uncover and follow the clues (in this case you might want to think … Gil Grissom, in CSI Las Vegas).

 

Inside the Lair of an Information Junkie …

What you’re going to find inside the lair of an information junkie is … stuff, lots and lots of stuff, starting with books. You’ll find tons of books depending on the range of the junkies habit … i.e.: is it highly focused or widely spread (I’m a widely spread sort … very eclectic in my interests).

You’ll also likely find paper … lots of it. From magazines and journals, to newspapers and printouts. There could be piles of the stuff, or it could be neatly organized and put away. In the case of a techno-nerd junkie you may find it scanned and digitized on a NAS system (Network Access Storage System) many terabytes deep.

In my case you’d also find old cassette tapes from recordings I made as well as recorded material I purchased. CDs, DVDs and BlueRay discs. You’d find as much or more of the same material in digital form on my own NAS systems (yes plural). Then if you looked a bit further you’d see that I’m still housing some old VHS tapes as well.

And … PAPER … lot’s and lots of paper. You’d find twenty years of my own journals. Manuals I bought from other trainers and information producers. Magazines and journals I’m keeping with articles that have some significance to me. And … ten times the paper I’m currently housing in digital formats.

It’s like housing and caring for another child!

But the defining factor is that this “collection” is living for me. I actually know what information I have (somewhere) … and a sense of it’s value to me as well.

I like knowing it’s there, secreted away in some dusty corner of my place, waiting for me to snatch it out of retirement when the mood strikes me … or I’m on a hunt where that specific piece of information or reference will be the key to unlock the secrets I’m searching.

I remember visiting with Irving Dardik, the discoverer of the Super Wave theory, and how he had rooms full of paper that were his version of a filing cabinet. Now there’s an information junkie for you!

 

Getting to the Point … Collectors and Experts

Okay, you may be getting a visceral sense of the commitment to information gathering, consuming and collecting that a true junkie has by now, or maybe not … but let’s move on with whatever you’ve gotten.

My point is actually two-fold:

A) Information can and does hold great value … in the right hands and when it’s properly used.

B) No amount of information will substitute for the real thing … i.e.: EXPERIENCE!

It’s that last bit that differentiates the pure collectors from the experts. Let’s keep it really simple, shall we?

Experts use the information they gather, consume and collect!

Yes, experts are no less information junkies than their brethren, the collectors, but they take things a step further … the use what they’ve collected.

This is a huge distinction … and what I’m about to say will mark me as a heretic among some information producers …

If you are not using the information you collect …
then it has no more value to you then:

1) the entertainment value it’s provided you with … or,
2) what you can sell the media you’ve collected for in an open market.

I know many, many people who collect information with “good intention” … but then never get around to even opening the package. I know many people who subscribe to magazine and on-line information sources that never even check out the contents. I know many, many people who have collections of information many, many layers deep and widely varied that they’ve never even looked at … and it’s all useless to them in that way.

The difference that makes the difference is that experts know how to get to and use the information they have access to and own.

They begin by recognized the rank scale order of value to them, i.e.: how much a given piece of information is worth to them at this time. They can quickly scan information and determine its real-time value to them. Then based on how valuable that information is to them in this moment, they decide where to put in on a hierarchy of urgency, and prioritize their consumption along that hierarchy.

There are largely two factors that impact the hierarchy and prioritization of information consumption … usefulness and entertainment value.

Experts also understand how to extract the most value with the least resource consumption. For example I know many experts who can glance at an article and decide what if any value it has for them, go directly to the part that has value and discard the rest … they feel no great commitment or urgency to “read it cover to cover.” This applies to books, magazines, papers, on-line material … whatever. They know how to maximize their information gathering and consumption efforts.

The experts also understand where to get information and how to get to it. They have “private” techniques unique to them that they use in their information gathering exploits. It may be a deep facility with using Internet searches. It may be a tremendous familiarity with libraries and their contents. It may be an overarching awareness of what the primary and best sources for the most current and useful information out there is today. Whatever their personal approach they have maximized its effectiveness.

Another “trick” of the experts is that invariably they have built up “information networks” … people they can count on to guide them to what they need or want with high efficiency.

The networks of information contacts that experts develop may be as valuable, or more valuable, then any information they themselves possess. They are aware of the “go-to” sources in the areas where they do their primary hunting … and know where the big game hides. Very seldom do the experts come back empty handed when they are working at this level.

 

Putting It All Together … What’s This Mean to You?

Well my final suggesting to you as a verifiable information junkie is this …

 

If you ain’t gonna use it …
save your time, energy, money and space …
don’t get it … pass it by.

 

This goes for all the information I produce as well of course.

You only have so many personal resources … and for my two cents your time and energy are among the most precious … conserve them and use them well. The same goes for money and space … use them well.

If  you have the need and/or desire … and you will consume the information you gather … by all means go for it.

If it’s just going to sit there … let it go. 99% of the time, by the time you get to it there will be better information out there to gather and consume (unless you are working on Renaissance literature hermetic research).

However, if you will get it … consume it … and use it don’t wait … go for it now!

Now my final caveat … there is no substitute for information, just like there is no substitute for experience. When you become an “expert” … knowing what you want and need … where to go and who to go to to get it … and you consume and use it … you’re life will be dramatically improved in unimaginable ways.

Mentoring In The Wild

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Getting Advice From A Great Mentor Isn’t Just Useful …
It’s Damn Indispensable If You’re Serious About Discovering What’s Possible On The Path

Mentoring is the process of renting your brain to someone else to use for a while as their own…

– Alan Weiss, Ph.D.
Author of “Million Dollar Consulting”

Mentoring 101:

One of the most significant things that you can do is to allow yourself to receive input from people who have been down the path before you, that you find yourself walking in this moment.

These people know what is on the trail. These are people who understand what is about to come up that you can’t see because it is not visible – and the only reason that they know it is there isn’t because they can see it, but because they have been there before and they know the obstacles, they know the traps on the trail. These people have seen the traps before and they can anticipate from the gleanings in the wind where they’ll be before they see them again. These people also get that even those things that are visible and recognizable to them are sometimes not visible or not available to be seen by someone who hasn’t seen them before.

On the other side of this coin these people also have the ability to sniff out opportunity in the fermentation stage, before it the process finishes and reaches completion where others become aware of it. This gives them the advantage of being where the opportunity will be before it appears. Instead of running with the pack to get to the opportunity after the fact, these people are sitting there waiting for it to appear knowing just where to be and when so by the time the pack reaches them they’re already picking their teeth from the meal they’ve already consumed – and the others are left to dine on left-overs.

Essentially a great mentor has a number of well honed qualities, including but not limited to having “been there and done that” with the t-shirt to prove it. In fact having the t-shirt just indicates the smallest essential part of the puzzle, and by itself alone would never justify adopting someone as a mentor IMO.

Far more essential than just having had the experience would be the learning that was ingested and digested along the way  – the stuff that has become part and parcel of who the mentor has become. This shows up in the skill set they possess, and even more plainly in their day t0 day behavior – especially in who they are off stage.

Finding a mentor who has moved beyond “talk the talk” to “walk the walk” may be the single most valuable thing you can do in finding and walking your own path when it coincides with they one they’ve learned to walk so well.

I want to share a little example of this unique skill set.

 

In Addition To The Jersey Devil There’s Another Incredibly Fascinating Character Living In The Pine Barrens Of New Jersey, And His Name Is Tom Brown, Jr.

There is a man in New Jersey here where I live by the name of Tom Brown. He grew up on the edge of the NJ Pine Barrens, and still makes him home there today. Tom is probably the world’s most outstanding tracker.

As a young boy Tom made a decision that he was going to be a tracker. He spent every free minute he had, after school, on weekends, holidays, over the summers … learning how to track from an old Indian scout who was the grandfather of one of his best friends. They went out tracking together from the time he was 15 years old learning how to find animal tracks in the fields, in the woods and along the streams where he lived.

When he graduated high-school, around the age of eighteen, his father confronted him with a choice; “… go to college and get a degree, or get a job and go to work.” Tom choose getting a job … he would be a tracker. The way he tells the story this didn’t necessarily go over so well in his home at the time, but in a few years he proved his ability and was consulting with police, law enforcement and rescue teams around the United States based on his amazing skills as a tracker.

By the time that I met Tom he was in his 50’s, and was incredibly accomplished. He had worked with law enforcement agencies around the world teaching tracking skills. He ran a tracking school in a place called Asbury, NJ on the edge of the Pine Barrens. which is a remote wilderness area near the southern center of state of New Jersey; and he taking executives and put them through a week or two week program where he would teach them wilderness skills. He specifically emphasized the idea of tracking and noticing for information that was present, but to the untrained eye invisible.

I spent a weekend with Tom learning tracking with him and there was a moment in which we walked around a field that surrounded a parking lot. At the edge where the field met the asphalt of the parking lot there was an area about 10 feet or 12 feet wide where the asphalt of the parking lot turned into dirt, the dirt turned into grass, and then the grass entered into the woods. Walking at a normal walking pace, let’s say about 3 mph, Tom was able to walk the perimeter of the parking lot and point out tracks that were present there – squirrel, fox, rabbit. When I looked down what I saw was dirt, dirt, dirt.

Then we slowed down, and Tom took me down to ground level, he put my hand in the track and said, “Feel this. Can you feel that indentation?” Of course it was there and I said I could. He said, “Look at those two little dots. Do you see them near the indentation?” When he pointed them out I could see the two little dots. He told me they were the nails of a squirrel. He could see moving at a walking pace around the perimeter of the parking lot two little dots in the ground that were the nails of a squirrel!

Tom knew that those two little dots he had seen meant that the squirrel that had left those tracks behind was running away from something, because he could see from the length of the squirrel’s stride that it had been running frantically. We then went backwards and he showed me where the fox had been at the edge of the woods, because the grass had been beaten down in a particular way. We went on this way for about 1 ½ hours. It was stunning. Tom could see what had happened in that small portion of the wilderness several hours before like he was looking at in unfolding before him in the moment.

The world that Tom Brown lives in and was obvious to him … inescapably obvious … was completely invisible to me. After two hours with him I was aware that there was a world out there that was still invisible to me, but I was no longer ignorant of its presence. If I chose to spend two, or three, or five years with Tom maybe I could get to the point where I could walk around the perimeter of a parking lot and see the trail, and the markings of the animals that had been there before – but I couldn’t do it that morning.

Despite the fact that I now know there are animal tracks and a story there in the dirt between the parking lot and the grass I still can’t do it. I don’t have the training, or the skills, or the knowledge to even know what to look for in that small space. But if Tom were walking with me on a trail I know there would be so much more present for me in my world than I ever experience as being present for me when I am just walking that trail by myself.

 

Walking Along The Trail With A Mentor Of Your Own

The same thing is true of walking along any mentor who knows the trail they’ve lived as well as Tom knows how to track. That domain of expertise can be mentoring in the area of business development, the area of specific skills development or it can be in the area of building a life that works. It doesn’t matter what area of domain of expertise the mentor possesses, if they are skillful enough they live in a world that the untrained person doesn’t ever see, let alone experience. Yet, it would be possible to experience the world in that way if they had a mentor who knew how to find the tracks, signals and signs, and was pointing them out along the way.

Mentors see things that are there, and obvious to the trained eye, that simply don’t exist for the person who doesn’t have the skill set they possess. They create leverage in the possibility of learning and growing that would be impossible to access without that expertise. Mentors make this kind of advanced learning and acuity available to you, and I know of no substitute for it. At every turn when I’ve wanted to take the next steps on my own life’s journey, first before all else, I’ve found myself a brilliant mentor to walk the path with me. I still surround myself with mentors, young and old as necessary and required, to guide the steps I take as continue moving forward in the adventure.

If  you are really serious and you really intend to make enormous leaps and gains in any area of skill development or improvement in your life … and raise the level of your performance beyond the capacity that you currently possess by performing on your own … find someone who has been there before and to engage them as a mentor doing whatever it takes to allow them to take you to where you aren’t yet, and they have already been.

 

A Small Bit Of Friendly Closing Advice

(NOTE: This Bit Is Only For Those Who Are Serious & Thick Skinned Enough For The Raw Truth … Proceed With Caution)

I’m sure you get that the message here has been that when you decide to make the leap of faith required to commit and engage on a path of your own … one you haven’t yet mastered but sense a compulsion to pursue … start by finding a mentor who can and will guide you in the journey you’re about to undertake. What I’d like to share in closing from what I’ve learned about taking this advice myself would be this …

Start by keeping your mouth shut. I know some of you will find that advice harsh. Many of you reading this have likely grown up in a culture where you’ve been taught that “learning should be a participative activity” and that “you should be a partner in the learning experience” and other such B.S. that doesn’t apply here at all IMO. In the mentoring relationship the mentor has the expertise that you do not yet possess, but desire to own for yourself. The fastest way to build the skills you desire for yourself almost always means doing what your told (AGGGHHHH!!!! I know you hate that one!).

NOW … AFTER YOU’VE DONE IT (unquestioningly) … ask all your questions … make all your comments … have all the disagreements you need or want. Because AFTER you’ve done it you’ll have an experience you can talk about that has depth and value … instead of engaging in mental masturbation about what you think but don’t know yet.