Back in 2008, the Washington post covered a really interesting study in which they had one of the most famous and talented musicians in the world, Joshua Bell, play some of his usual concert pieces incognito in a subway.  Almost no one stopped to listen or recognized how beautifully he was playing.

Within the last few weeks- Jay Baer wrote a great post about how, thanks to new media like Twitter, it is much easier to come by information but along with this new speed of information transfer is a wane in more investigative knowledge mining.  

The way I see it, both these touch on the same theme: as the world moves faster and faster with more and more information and stimulation, are we losing touch with what is truly meaningful? Do we now need contextual cues (ie: big names, high Klout scores, crowds etc) to see the quality of what we read and experience?

But we’re busy

In the case of the both the accumulation of knoweldge and the Joshua Bell experiment, the same, and very legitimate, excuse was voiced: “But we’re busy”, “we have to work”, “we don’t have time to stop and analyze everything”.  That’s true, and also why it’s becoming increasingly valuable to find ways to scale work and social media efforts.  

However, perhaps this need not be an all or nothing type deal.  We don’t need to busily skim over everything or stop in our tracks for hours to analyze something.  As we aim to process information and experiences efficiently, are there any strategies to help us process them meaningfully as well?

Prioritize what is important to you

(comment from Jay Baer’s blog post)

With more information there are way more distractions.  So one idea is to take some time each week, or perhaps even each day, to reflect on what is really important both at work and in life.  With a list of goals and priorities in mind, it will be a lot easier to avoid the distractions of the day and take note of what is important.

Stay Mindful in Your Routine

Most of the people in the subway the day Joshua Bell was playing were doing the same thing they had done countless times over: got up and dressed at 8am, took the subway to work, passed by the street performers, etc etc.  And when you do the same thing every day, it’s very easy for your mind to follow your actions into auto-pilot mode.  It’s a much easier piece of advice to talk about then to actually do, but keeping mentally engaged in what you do will not only help you enjoy it more and learn faster, but also notice the nuances of the experience.  

What other strategies do you use to process experiences meaningfully as well as efficiently?

One of the more common mistakes we see users making when creating “Filter-My-Following” lists, is using the connecting word “and” instead of “or”.  Here’s when to use each:

And

Putting an “and” between words in the bio or location filter tells it that the words on either side must both be included in either the location or bio.  Some cases where this would be useful would be with terms like “Social Media”, “Vampire Diaries” or “Vancouver Island”.

Or

Putting an “or” between words in the bio or location filter tells it that only one of the words on either side of it needs to be included.  Most cases would be better served using “or” instead of “and”. One example would be making a list of people interested in education and so filtering for “education” or “learning” or “school plan”.