The Low Information Diet

I've been reading Timothy Ferriss's blog, specifically his entries about the "low information diet." This is a powerful concept. It refers to not reading the newspaper, spending less time on email and the web and generally limiting the information that comes into your life. Here's a great example of why you don't need to follow the news, from Ferriss's interview with Drew Curtis of Fark.com:

Ferriss: If you had to limit your information intake to less than 30 minutes a day (excluding email), what would you consume/read/watch?

Curtis: Nothing. I’d wait until my friends asked me “did you see that?” and then say “no, why do you ask?” and see if their response is interesting. You can always catch up later. Oftentimes when news breaks it’s hours or days before anyone knows what actually happened. Wait until next week for the summary if it’s that important.

Why is this good? In your personal life, you free up more time to do the things you want to do. At work, you stop being interrupted by questions and requests all the time because a) you don't answer your email fast enough and b) people start to realize you didn't read the article in question so you don't know the answer anyway.