How much time on a usual day are you spending researching/reading stuff?
I recently found myself getting distracted by reading/"learning" written media a couple of hours each day. I figured at the evening that I had at least spent 1.5 hours of the day going through written content, but I didn't have the feeling that I learnt or took away very much of this. Are you in the same situation?
What would you estimate, how much time a day do you spend on researching stuff, may it be Wikipedia, Indie Hackers, Blog Posts, Business Insider, Reddit or any other written source.
What I'd count in here is:
- If you actively research a topic that you want or need to learn more about
- Distracting yourself by reading through other people's stories
- Actively contributing to communities (reading as a byproduct)
- Everything else in this regard.
Really curious on how much time (average hours / minutes) a day you are spending.
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Around 3-4 hours
Are you feeling this time is effectively used or wasted? Or a mixture of both?
In my opinion it is a mixture of both. A mixture of information noise and fear not to be informed enough.
I probably spend two or three hours a day researching and keeping up-to-date with my interests and investments. It was once I began to understand the importance and process of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) gathering, that I became hooked on research.
Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy doing; taking action is critical too. But there is an overwhelming amount of quality, relevant information to consume each day.
Would you say you are really absorbing most parts of the content you consume? Do you have some sort of system to save these information?
I'm still in the early phase of even just coming up with ideas and learning more about building my own products so I tend to spend maybe 2-4 hours on any given day researching/reading. However, I do try to focus on only things I think will bring me value. If I start reading an article that has some of the same lessons I've already heard before I'll just give it a quick skim and move on. And when I do find something interesting or new I write it down in my notes, organized by when I think I'll want the information (ideation vs validation vs building etc.)
Interesting. Which notes software do you use?
I use Notion!
I fall into rabbit holes a lot, so I'd say around 3 hours for competitive research and co founder hunting per day.
How much of that would you estimate is time that is spent with having a value result/tracable outcome?
Good q - I would say about 30 min of it is actually valuable time for discovery that converts into something useful net net. Feels a bit like needle in the haystack to me, but well worthwhile if you're desperate enough like me to satisfy your objectives/goals.
Maybe take me 2 hours in the morning.
Do you feel this is well invested 2 hours or are you consuming in first place wothout making use of the gathered information?
my attention span is very short so im basically zipping my whole day back and forth between different topics, for example just before i re-entered indiehackers i was reading about a new thing i didnt know called PocketBase :D
Are you feeling you are missing efficiency because of this or are you doing that in your spare time?
i can be in the middle of my work but something can pop to my mind about a certain topic and i can open my phone and check about it for like 5 min, get my satisfaction and return to my work
i think its the best way FOR ME to educate myself
About an hour per day. I send almost everything to my Kindle and read in the evening (before going to bed)
Wow that's a good way of doing it. So Kindle also has a web browser installed? Or are you saving the content in some file format and then send it to your Kinde?
EDIT: Just saw your project ktool - good stuff, man, really like it!
I did has this phase before. I used to spent close to 3 sometimes 4 hours most days just reading, watching, and consuming content of various different kinds. I've even saved many different ones to "read later" and have probable only read 20% of that.
Then it came to a point where I had to do an information "diet" and only use what I already have. Less info and more action.
How did the diet transform your workday or overall productivity? Are you getting more done now?
I definitely found myself getting distracted too. Now, I set myself 30 minutes to browse/research. I found that it's enough to learn some things, participate in the community a bit, etc.
Good one. For me it's really hard to break the habit of simply opening a new tab or clicking a link that somebody sent to me. This always brings me into the research loop. Will try to work with 30 min time boxes per day as well.