Info hoarding
Recently I have been thinking about whether this helps my work and productivity, or is just another time waster. Is it enough to read an article, post, tweet or site and absorb the contents, does that increase my knowledge? Is it worth the added step of saving, organising and reflecting on what I have read and found over the past, week, month or year?
This week I read Fridays Favourites post by Harold Jarche. It made me realise that there may be value in reviewing favourited tweets (and other information), just as there is in reflecting on other things I do and learn. I have made use of a years worth of favourited tweets in the past, for the annual TripleJ Top 100. I tend to favourite songs as I listen to them - they are listed on the TripleJplays twitter account as they are played on the radio. At the end of the year it is easy for me to look back at the years releases that I liked.
Sharing
I also share a lot of what I read and like. I believe there is value in this, which is why I use Twitter and LinkedIn and Feedly - to learn from what others share, know and do.
Multiple sources
I have piles of printed articles and papers that I have printed or cut out of magazines. I have made several failed attempts to organise these in folders. I use Feedly for keeping up to date via blogs, Twitter to follow people I respect and trust, Delicious for useful links and sites and Evernote to capture information I want to keep. I also recently started using Mendeley to capture journal articles that may be useful and certainly would if I had time at the start of a new project to read all of the articles and information I have gathered.
Review or research?
We are about to start an Intranet project at work in the new year and I know if I had the time to read the relevant books, articles, posts and guides that I have gathered over the past 2 years, the project would benefit. OR I could spend that time researching from scratch and target the specific questions I need answered. I would probably refer to the same sources, James Robertson's blog, UX articles etc. It is a big subject, information architecture, usability, change management, design, records and information management, project management, user engagement and acceptance........
So should I take the time in January to review the tweets I favourited in 2014 ...... and my saved blog posts, my piles of paper and electronic articles or discard it all and start afresh?? Any thoughts??
