Assessing Knowledge Resources

How Do You Judge the Helpfulness of Information? And Why Does This Matter?

One of the few beneficial side-effects of the 2016 American federal elections, in which Donald Trump was elected President, is that thinking people are more aware than ever of threats to knowledge. Post-truth has entered dictionaries. We complain about fake news. We point fingers.

Assessing sources of information has always been one of the most difficult cognitive challenges thinking-people face. I discussed this topic at length in my first book. Yesterday, I published an additional chapter of my new book that deals extensively with this issue. It is the third of seven principles of Cognitive Productivity with macOS®: 7 Principles for Getting Smarter with Knowledge:

Assess Analytically

Continue reading How Do You Judge the Helpfulness of Information? And Why Does This Matter?

Response to Chad Grill’s Article “Reading Books Will Help You Build These 7 Habits”

In his article, “Reading Books Will Help You Build These 7 Habits” Chad Grills reminds us of the importance of reading great books.

I have to agree with Chad’s claim that “Books are the most undervalued and under-appreciated technology in the world.” Coincidentally, Continue reading Response to Chad Grill’s Article “Reading Books Will Help You Build These 7 Habits”

Is This Information Sufficiently Helpful?

In Cognitive Productivity I described several illusions and biases that interfere with our ability to leverage knowledge resources. The first set of illusions is to over-estimate or underestimate the “helpfulness” of a knowledge resources.

Illusions of Helpfulness of Information

Selecting the right resource to process is critical to the development of effectiveness. Continue reading Is This Information Sufficiently Helpful?

Benefitting From Potent Knowledge Gems on Acceptance and Commitment and Other Topics

Getting enough high quality sleep is important for cognitive productivity. I’ve developed a technique called the cognitive shuffle. This is a technique that you can use in bed to ease you into sleep. I always try to make it clear that it is not a silver bullet. I recently posted an article on mySleepButton about how it can be used with acceptance and commitment therapy. “Acceptance and commitment” is a “third wave” psychological framework that aims to help people better relate to the content their minds generate. (That framework has some dubious “behavioral” theoretical baggage which you can safely ignore.)

Continue reading Benefitting From Potent Knowledge Gems on Acceptance and Commitment and Other Topics

Going Back to School with a Productive Mindset

Higher education students are mentally taxed like never before. They have an enormous amount of information to process in an intense, short period of time.

Students face many conundrums. They have no choice but to use information technology to process information. Technology, however, also presents challenges. For example, students are bombarded with emails, social media updates, text messages, phone calls and other communications. Yet studying and writing requires undivided attention. Students must process scholarly information with all kinds of applications, such as web browsers, PDF readers, ebook readers and multimedia players. These applications, however, are designed mainly for the masses who are content to “surf”. Higher education students, in contrast, need to delve deeply into complex knowledge.

Continue reading Going Back to School with a Productive Mindset