1. Read, read, read. I love reading. I used to finish two books a month. I have been very lucky since my parents are both voracious readers and reading was just a natural thing to do when I was growing up. So try to read as much as possible. I will discuss more about reading techniques in a latter post.
2. Listen to podcasts. I regularly listen to about ten podcasts and I learn so much from listening to them. I don't understand everything that is said on the podcast but I pick up stuff, which relates to somethings that I know already. This helps me further build my knowledge base. Please see my post of about podcasts.
3. Read the news. This sounds obvious but people don't follow the news as much. Also, a lot of news is actually noise, not much information. These days, I tend to read news shared by my friends on facebook or those that are highly liked. They are not always the most informative but they are somewhat interesting. I will share about new reading techniques in a future post.
4. Listen....Listen...Listen to others. People love to talk about themselves and their work. All you have to do is to remain quiet and let them talk. I have learned so much from people telling me about their work. I just asked a few questions and they talked for a good half an hour. So ask others about themselves and their work, they will enlighten you about things that you were never familiar with. For instance, I talked to an entrepreneur before and he told me all the bad stuff he had to go through and how he persevered. His insights were really helpful and I was able to advise other friends who were thinking of creating their own startups.
5. Write it down! Now! This is actually the most important point. Input of information is only the beginning, value is only created when you process the information and integrate it to your knowledge base. In my case, I use three methods. First, I keep notes for each subject. For finance, I have a whole series of notes that I loosely organize by topic. I keep adding new information and occasionally I would go over the material. Second, I keep a diary. In the diary, I write about things that I have learned today and how that applies to me and to the world. It is more intimate and less censored. Finally, I write the "What I have learned today" posts. This forces me to learn new stuff everyday and also pushes me to organize the information.
Well, I hope you have found these tips useful. Please share your productivity hacks in acquiring new information in the comment section :D
*From Floating Forests
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