It is widely accepted that we are now in the age of Internet, but like it or not, our brains haven’t been inured to the environment of information explosion. Though we may do much more reading than before, the in-depth reading, however, is not enough.
Then how could we effectively deal with the massive information we are exposed to every day?
How to collect information efficiently
To absorb more information during the limited time, content sources of high quality are of high importance because our time should be spent on comprehending the information itself, instead of searching and filtering.
We need to customize the content sources that are best for ourselves, and in this way, we will be kept posted about the information we care about, instead of those that the media want you to read.
Instead of visiting many of the same websites every day, you can instead take advantage of RSS, which is short for Really Simple Syndication, to gather headlines from those sites and either feed them directly to your computer automatically or place them at a website you view online. If you want additional information about the story behind the headline, you can always click on the headline to read more.
Reading regular articles is a way to collect information, and searching online actively is another. To help us collect wanted information more efficiently, the browsers should load pages faster to show the search results, and during browsing, there should be no unnecessary notification or advertisement. This will help us stay focus on the reading.
Maxthon5 browser is definitely a brilliant choice for collecting information. With a clean and simple UI, it loads all pages fast under different networks. Besides, reader mode is available when you are reading so that you will not be disturbed by any other media except the text.
Ad blocker and RSS reader are native extensions in Maxthon5 browser, so you don’t need to struggle with the extension selection and installation again.
You can also refer to our previous blogs of Are You Still Collecting Information By Copying & Pasting? and 2 Small Features in Browser That Make You More Efficient to get more tips about collecting information effectively.
How to store information efficiently
What do you usually do after you read an insightful and helpful article online? Keep this tab open till you close the computer before you leave the office, and forget the content completely after 2 or 3 days? It’s just like you have never seen it, right?
For the high-quality articles, the best way to memorize them is to archive and save them to the related document folders, as the reference material in future.
Maxnote is a good tool to store these articles. Firstly, it’s native in Maxthon5 browser, so the browsing and storing will be seamlessly connected; secondly, the content type could be various in Maxnote: website links, text or image content, snapshots, or even the whole webpage. It’s very convenient; thirdly, Maxnote is available in Maxthon5 browser across different platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and online web. So you can sync and visit your content at anytime, anywhere.
How to digest information efficiently
Given that the information has been well collected and stored, the next step is to convert them to your own knowledge, which is a process of breaking and reconstruction. For this process, mind mapping is a great way to lay out your thoughts and brainstorm new ideas. Rather than just using simple lists, you’re able to link ideas in multiple different ways. You can think creatively rather than just linearly. In other words, mind mapping is meant to help you structure chaotic ideas.
XMind is a useful open source mind mapping tool for mind mapping. You can gather ideas and craft them into a logical structure to help identify critical information, uncover patterns, relationships, priorities, and trends.
Besides, in XMind, your mind map can be exported into a variety of formats for seamless collaboration, including PDF, PNG, JPEG and more. Along with a mind map structure, XMind also offers tree, logic and fishbone charts, with a built-in spell checker, search, encryption and even audio notes.
In this era, time is the most important asset we have. We’ll get the return for the time we invested. Thought that all media are trying to catch our focus, to get the very meaningful and helpful information, we should learn to resist the noise first with available tools.
Hope this blog could be meaningful and helpful to you & happy browsing!