My System For Getting On Top Of Information

I get a number of people asking me “How do you find out this stuff?” Or “How do you process news and information for the material on your blog?” So I thought I’d outline a little about the process I go through everyday to scan issues and stories. Whether you write a blog or not, your job as a media professional or everyday person is to be aware of the issues facing the culture. So developing a system for digesting information, and then thinking about it and processing it will make a dramatic difference in your ideas, your strategies, and your intellectual depth. It’s nothing stupendous, but it works for me:

1. I wake up every morning around 6:30am and work out at least 3-4 days a week. While working out, I alternate between CNN’s Headline News and Fox News on TV. Interesting the different perspectives you find between the two networks. I also watch a few music videos on MTV or VH1 to keep up on what’s happening in that world, and even scan some religious media programming on BET or TBN…
2. During breakfast, I read the Los Angeles Times for the liberal side of things and the Wall Street Journal for the conservative side. I also look through the Los Angeles Daily News for a more middle of the road perspective.
3. From a weekly newsmagazine perspective, I subscribe to Time and Newsweek, and also to World magazine. Honestly, I have a magazine fetish, so I also get sports, technology, and cultural magazines like “Image Journal” as well.
4. From an online perspective, my favorite RSS reader is yourminis.com. It’s based on RSS widgets that allow you to fill a page with numerous RSS feeds from different sources and customize their size and placement. Rather than a single page for one RSS, Yourminis allows you to have many different RSS feeds, so you can scan them easily. In addition, the site allows you to have multiple pages, with each page designed the way you want. So in my case, I have:

-- A Branding page of RSS feeds from my favorite sources on branding and marketing. (About 7)
-- A Media page of RSS feeds from various media sources. (6)
-- A News page from news sources (6)
-- A Religious page (6)
-- A Weather page from the various cities I travel to on a regular basis.
-- An Entertainment featuring YouTube, AOL Video, and various other online entertainment sources.

Yourminis allows me to scan many RSS feeds to see what’s happening in the world in a very short amount of time. I highly recommend you give it a try. It takes a little set up, but once it’s done, it’s fantastic.

Here’s the point – you want information about what’s happening in the world, but you need to be able to go through it efficiently. You defeat the purpose if you sit around all day watching the news and reading magazines. That’s why I:

-- Get the morning TV news while working out.
-- Read the papers during breakfast.
-- Catch up on my magazines during plane trips. (Being trapped on a plane makes you wonderfully productive).
-- Scan through the RSS feeds first thing after arriving in the office.

By the start of work you’re done, and ready to use that information to beat the competition, create new projects, do your work more effectively, or whatever. My system may not work for you, but the important thing is to develop something, so you can get the information you need to make a difference out there.

Also - share this with others who could use a few productivity tips. We need more people out there wrestling with issues and confronting the culture in a compassionate, creative way, and the key is getting the right information first. So e-mail this link to people who could use it!