181. Goggles vs Google
goggles
A pair of tight-fitting eyeglasses, often tinted or having side shields, worn to protect the eyes from hazards such as wind, glare, water, or flying debris.
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There's goggles and there's Google. Google is about access to information, whereas goggles are about your ability to assess information.
One is about quantity, the other is about quality.
If you don't have the right goggles, Google cannot help you. I would define "goggles" here as mental eyeglasses to protect you from bad, irrelevant, glitzy-but-useless information.
How do you develop those "mental eyeglasses"? Just search this blog for the key words "Charlie Munger" and you'll know what I mean. He calls them "mental models."
So anyways, how do you evaluate the quality of the information you're getting?
One trick is to ask yourself: How does THIS information help me to reach my goal? (Of course, you have to have a written goal first).
Watching TV news is useless, of course, because the anchor news person, no matter how likeable and friendly and confident-looking, cannot possibly know what YOUR goal is. As a result, he / she cannot help you -- that is, cannot give you the information you need to make better decisions in life.
If you watch 15 minutes of TV news every day, that's 15 minutes you'll never get back. Ever.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against news people; I have friends who are reporters, editors and anchorpersons.
I guess the success secret here is to focus on the quality of the information you're getting. One cannot make good decisions with bad information. (Garbage in, garbage out).
Oftentimes, a small amount of good information will come to you while being buried in a lot of irrelevant information. The key, as mentioned before, is to wear mental "goggles" so you can rapidly extract the good / relevant information (sometimes called "intelligence") and make better decisions in your career, your business or your life.
A pair of tight-fitting eyeglasses, often tinted or having side shields, worn to protect the eyes from hazards such as wind, glare, water, or flying debris.
---
There's goggles and there's Google. Google is about access to information, whereas goggles are about your ability to assess information.
One is about quantity, the other is about quality.
If you don't have the right goggles, Google cannot help you. I would define "goggles" here as mental eyeglasses to protect you from bad, irrelevant, glitzy-but-useless information.
How do you develop those "mental eyeglasses"? Just search this blog for the key words "Charlie Munger" and you'll know what I mean. He calls them "mental models."
So anyways, how do you evaluate the quality of the information you're getting?
One trick is to ask yourself: How does THIS information help me to reach my goal? (Of course, you have to have a written goal first).
Watching TV news is useless, of course, because the anchor news person, no matter how likeable and friendly and confident-looking, cannot possibly know what YOUR goal is. As a result, he / she cannot help you -- that is, cannot give you the information you need to make better decisions in life.
If you watch 15 minutes of TV news every day, that's 15 minutes you'll never get back. Ever.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against news people; I have friends who are reporters, editors and anchorpersons.
I guess the success secret here is to focus on the quality of the information you're getting. One cannot make good decisions with bad information. (Garbage in, garbage out).
Oftentimes, a small amount of good information will come to you while being buried in a lot of irrelevant information. The key, as mentioned before, is to wear mental "goggles" so you can rapidly extract the good / relevant information (sometimes called "intelligence") and make better decisions in your career, your business or your life.
posted by Super Peter at 9:44 PM
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