Jim Goulding
2004
www.jamesgoulding.com
research note
Overcoming Information Overload
How to Quickly Read Through Magazines, Articles, White Papers and More
There’s a specific reason why I put a table of contents in this document. Read
on and you’ll understand that reason.
Contents
Overcoming Information Overload..................................................................................... 1
How to Quickly Read Through Magazines, Articles, White Papers and More .............. 1
There’s a specific reason why I put a table of contents in this document. Read on and
you’ll understand that reason. ......................................................................................... 1
Tools ................................................................................................................................... 2
Disseminating Information ............................................................................................. 3
Books .............................................................................................................................. 4
Reading tools for books .............................................................................................. 4
Mnemonics (memory techniques)................................................................................... 5
Here are some basics about mnemonics: .................................................................... 5
Association .................................................................................................................. 5
Location ...................................................................................................................... 6
White Paper on Organizational skills (The Spire Project) .............................................. 6
The Information Research FAQ.................................................................................. 6
Speed-Reading ................................................................................................................ 6
Internet Search Engines .................................................................................................. 7
Global Search Engines ................................................................................................ 7
Meta-Search Engines & Google ................................................................................. 8
Categorized Lists ........................................................................................................ 9
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The best book I’ve read on organizing and reading information is, How to Survive the
Information Age. It’s a step-by-step process that taught me many things, most
importantly, it taught me how to read periodicals, reports, books, and white papers
efficiently. This paper will cover some of the things I learned from that book and some of
the other books I’ve studied on personal productivity.
Tools
Stop.
Forget about all the information that is contained in this document. It’s useless if it
overwhelms you, in the least. What we need is a way to survive the onslaught of the
information age.
We’ll begin right here, right now, with this document. I promise, that after you’re done
reading the next few paragraphs, you’ll never look at information the same way. I’m
merely sharing a formula for reading. That’s it. It’s that simple. Lastly, you’ll cut your
stress level, when it comes to dealing with documents and information in general.
1. Get a piece of paper and write down why you are reading this document. What is
your purpose?
a. Maybe you could ask yourself some of these questions to help you find
that answer
i. what do you want to know?
ii. what do you want to get out of this paper?
iii. is there a certain question you want answered?
iv. facts you need to know?
b. There are six fundamental purposes for reading:
i. to grasp a certain message
ii. to find important details
iii. to answer a specific question
iv. to evaluate what you are reading
v. to apply what you are reading
vi. to be entertained
c. Answer the question posed and you will cut your reading time a great deal.
By answering this simple question. You are automatically filtering out
zillions of piece of information that you do not want to know.
d. Said a different way
i. purpose defines reading methods
1. there are 3 basic methods of reading
a. quick reference (seek specific information on a
question posed or concern)
b. critical (discerning ideas and concepts. analysis)
c. pleasure
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2. Let’s get going. Go back to the table of contents (TOC). Read it. Mark the entries
that interest you, with a pen. If you are viewing this electronically, then use MS
Words’ highlighting tool. (It’s the icon right next to the font color icon.) When
you are done, come back to this section and go to step 3.
3. You’ve just cut your reading time by at least 50% or more because you’ve marked
what is important to you. This tool is a filter for deleting unwanted data.
4. The next step is to go to the chapters you highlighted in the TOC and do the
following:
a. read the chapter title to reinforce the subject matter
b. read the text and use a highlighter or pen to mark anything that catches
your eye.
c. go to the next chapter title and repeat steps, a and b
5. Here’s one more tool you may want to use. Highlight the sections you need to
access later in yellow. Highlight the sections that you want to read about later in a
different color. That way, you don’t have to keep that information in your head.
That’s all there is to it. You can do this with a magazine, newsletter, or a white paper etc.
That’s it for now. There are plenty of other tools. But, we need to stick with a few at a
time. The idea is to not overwhelm you. You can move on in this document or come back
later.
Disseminating Information
Having access to information is the most important aspect of ‘how to survive the
information age’. If you already know where a large amount of data is, then you’ve
saved a lot of time.
1. I’ve built a dbase containing 1000s of documents and web sites. It can be
accessed on the network shared drive, GH Data on 'Chidc1'. The folders for the
dbase are located as follows: TA Trader DB | Information_dbase | Research
The database consists two main categories:
1. documents
2. web sites
3. go to the data base
4. read the ‘read me’ document in the Information_dbase folder
5. Now, scan the folders. They’re in alphabetical order. Jot down what subject
interest you.
a. by completing the steps above you’ll save 60% of your time because:
i. you will have a better understanding what is in the dbase
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ii. you’ll understand whether it’s something you want to look at
Books
Ron Fry has a great line of books on personal productivity and more. I quote him often in
this document. Furthermore, many of the methods in this paper are his.
Reading tools for books
1. The tool I provided in the introduction section above called ‘Tools’ is a good tool
for reading magazines and white papers. Now, we need a tool for reading books.
Here’s a list of things that can help you breeze through a book.
2. get a sheet of paper
a. Use this paper for the small number of notes you will need to write. Keep
the paper in the book at the front after you are done using the book.
3. go to the TOC in the book
4. Mark the chapters that interest you with a pen. Or, if you don’t want to mark up
the book, then get a post it note, write the chapters that interest you on the note
and stick the note on the TOC, in the book.
5. If there’s an ‘Introduction’ or ‘Preface’ in the book, read it. The theme of the
book will be in there. Write the theme down on the sheet of paper. If there isn’t a
theme, don’t worry, you’ll find it later. When you do come across it write it down
on the top of the paper.
6. go to the first chapter you marked
a. read the title, then, any sub headings in the chapter
b. read any bullet points
c. read any diagrams
d. look at any pictures and read the captions
e. Look at the end of the chapter and see if there is a chapter summary. Read
it.
7. Now, go back to the beginning of the chapter and read the first line of every
paragraph, through the end to the chapter.
8. You may be done. For some people this is all that is needed to get an
understanding what they are trying to say.
9. If you want to, go back to the beginning of the chapter and read the text.
By following the simple steps above, you’ll understand the theme and concepts of the
chapter much better because you’ve already skimmed through it. The ideas will stick
much better, also.
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Further Reading
The Great Big Book of Personal Productivity:
http://www.careerpress.com/book178.html
The rest of Ron’s books can be found here:
http://www.greatjobstore.com/author_search.php?q=Ronald+W.+Fry
Mnemonics (memory techniques)
Memory techniques can be very helpful when you want to truly commit something to
memory. I’ve posted a few documents on these techniques in the document section of the
dbase under ‘Productivity tools’ then ‘Mnemonics’ (pronounced with the M silent).
Under the web site section of the dbase, go to ‘Reasearch & Tools’ then, ‘mnemonics’.
Here are some basics about mnemonics:
1. The three fundamental principles underlying the use of mnemonics are:
a. association
b. imagination
c. location
Association
“Association is the method by which you link a thing to be remembered to a method of
remembering it. Although we can and will suggest associations to you, your own
associations are much better as they reflect the way in which your mind works.”
[reference unknown]
Things can be associated by:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
being placed on top of the associated object
crashing or penetrating into each other
merging together
wrapping around each other
rotating around each other or dancing together
being the same color, smell, shape, or feeling
etc.
“Whatever can be used to link the thing being remembered with the image used to recall
it is the association image.” [reference unknown]
“As an example: Linking the number 1 with a goldfish might be done by visualizing a 1shaped spear being used to spear a goldfish to feed a starving family.” [reference
unknown]
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Imagination
“Imagination is used to create the links and associations needed to create effective
memory techniques - put simply, imagination is the way in which you use your mind to
create the links that have the most meaning for you. Images that I create will have less
power and impact for you, because they reflect the way in which we think. The more
strongly you imagine and visualize a situation, the more effectively it will stick in your
mind for later recall. Mnemonic imagination can be as violent, vivid, or sensual as you
like, as long as it helps you to remember what needs to be remembered.” [reference
unknown]
Location
“Location provides you with two things: a coherent context into which information can
be placed so that it hangs together, and a way of separating one mnemonic from another:
e.g. by setting one mnemonic in one village, I can separate it from a similar mnemonic
located in another place.
“Location provides context and texture to your mnemonics, and prevents them from
being confused with similar mnemonics. For example, by setting one mnemonic with
visualizations in the town of Horsham in the UK and another similar mnemonic with
images of Manhattan allows us to separate them with no danger of confusion.
“So using the three fundamentals of Association, Imagination and Location you can
design images that strongly link things with the links between themselves and other
things, in a context that allows you to recall those images in a way that does not conflict
with other images and associations.” [reference unknown]
White Paper on Organizational skills (The Spire Project)
There’s a great white paper called, The Spire Project. I’ve posted this document on the
link mentioned in the ‘Disseminating Information’ section of this document.
Here’s a clip from that paper.
The Information Research FAQ
“100 pages of search techniques, tactics and theory by David Novak of the Spire Project.
(www.SpireProject.com) This FAQ addresses information literacy; the skills, tools and
theory of information research. Particular attention is paid to the internet as both a
reservoir and gateway to information resources.”
Speed-Reading
Speed-reading is no longer the ‘Evelyn Wood’ courses many of us grew up with. The
advent of the computer has helped this skill flourish.
I use Rocket Reader.
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What makes this software incredible is its versatility. You can use their suggested reading
or you can read your own books. Furthermore you can read web pages with Rocket
Reader.
If you’d like an example of how you can use e-books with this program, do the following
after you install Rocket Reader
1. download an e-book from my online library at
http://jamesgoulding.com/americanhistory.html
2. when you get there, click the ‘TOC’ and it will take you to the table of contents
3. click on any book that interests you and it will come up on your screen
4. save the file as .txt, on your computer and you are in business
5. or just click the link below and it will download Thomas Paines, Common Sense
http://jamesgoulding.com/americanhistoryebooks/Revolution/paine/commonsense.txt
6. Once you have Rocket Reader loaded, it gives you the option to pick the material
you want. The only requirement is that it’s in .txt format. Experiment a little bit
with it and you’ll be off to the races.
In one month my speed increased from 200 wpm to 450 wpm.
Internet Search Engines
You’ve heard about them. They’re everywhere. But what is the best way to use them?
What are the short cuts that can be used to get the best results, and which engine is the
best? Here’s a brief synopsis of the major search engines as written in, The Spire Project.
Global Search Engines
Altavista (http://altavista.com ) includes a very large, fast search
engine. It allows for Basic Boolean AND + NOT - OR | Proximity " " ~
(near - within 10 words of each other.) Several Fields: title:” Spire
Project" domain: gov url:edu link: cn.net.au and Truncation/Wildcard (*)
Of import, Capitals matter with Altavista.
All-the-Web (http://www.alltheweb.com ) is important because it is large
- really large - with a flexible search facility. Allows Partial
Boolean + - Simple Proximity " " and Several Fields a title field
search normal.title:spire url field url.all:.au link text and link url
fields normal.atext:spire link.all:cn.net.au All-the-Web is not case
sensitive. The same database supporting All-the-Web supports Lycos.
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Inktomi (via http://hotbot.lycos.com ) provides its substantial web
directory through other companies, in this case, HotBot. also allows
searches by region, by date, and more.
Debriefing (http://www.debriefing.com ) is our meta-search engine of
choice. Use this to find names & named websites. Accepts Partial
Boolean + - Simple Proximity " ". Capitals matter.
Google(http://www.google.com/ ) is a new style of search engine which
ranks sites with more care and concern. This works well for sites you
know a little about in advance. Unfortunately, has no useful field
searches. Allows Partial Boolean + - Simple Proximity " ".
Unfortunately, No Truncation not even for plurals!
When searching for a topic with precise descriptive terms, use a broad
search engines. Always place the Boolean +symbol before each search
word (like this: +word1 +word2) to insist all words appear in the
results. Quotes keep words together ("word1 word2"). These two simple
steps dramatically improve results. Keep adding words and search limits
until the number of hits is reasonable.
For more global search engines, there are numerous lists to consider
like the W3 Search Engines page at the University of Geneva
(http://cui.unige.ch/meta-index.html#INF ) and the Industry Research
Desk (http://www.rbbi.com/links/sengine.htm ).
Meta-Search Engines & Google
If you know something of the destination already, like a title or
company name or full name, try using a search tool that excels in
finding named websites. There should be little difficulty in finding
such sites with either Google or a Meta-Search engine, but don't get
excited and use these on other occasions.
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Categorized Lists
When searching for information that lends itself to a particular
category or topic, start with resources which group information in
categories. With few exceptions, these resources index websites, not
webpages. Also, keep your search words simple as these are small
databases.
Yahoo (http://yahoo.com ) is the largest of this type of directory tree;
the definitive site. Accepts Partial Boolean + - Simple Proximity " "
Truncation * and Several Field t: (for titles) u: (for urls) and a
date field through a form.
The Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org ) is a Netscape effort to,
presumably, mute the strength of Yahoo. It is very good, and very
similar to Yahoo.
Looksmart (http://www.looksmart.com ) is another significant directory.
For an alternative, try the World Wide Web Virtual Library: Subject
Catalogue (http://vlib.org/Overview.html ), a distributed network of
subject lists, not nearly as dominant as Yahoo, but far more
"scholarly" shall we say. This virtual directory has been around many
years, previously famous from www.w3.org.
Thank you,
Jim Goulding
http://www.jamesgoulding.com/CV.html
http://meanisout.blogspot.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgoulding
Disclaimer:
This Research Note is meant for research only. If you attempt to use these
ideas trading, you’re doing so solely at your own risk.