The Anti-Columnist Part 3: The Art of Not Reading

"In the cultivation of the mind, our emphasis should be not on concentration, but on attention. Concentration is a process of forcing the mind to narrow down to a point, whereas attention is without frontiers." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I was pleasantly surprised to learn I made it into the final round of the MarketWatch "World's Next Greatest Investing Columnist" competition. 

The surprise (and what made it pleasant) was that 3 finalists were voted in by receiving the most Facebook "Likes" and another 3 were selected by editors; I was in the latter group, which I believe to be a more respectable distinction. 

With that said, those of you who voted on Facebook certainly helped me get noticed by the editors.  Thank-you!  So please vote again in this final round (see how to vote at the bottom of this post).

The next challenge I faced was thinking of a column topic worthy of a final round submission--something instructive and useful but not distracting--and something in my natural voice.  It only took a few minutes for me to arrive at the idea, which would remain within the anti-columnist frame of the prior two contest submissions...

"The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

To paraphrase Buddha, "You are what you think."  In different words, there is certainly a "junk in, junk out" result that comes from the information you consume.  Therefore, to think well, it is imperative to read well; and one's information diet needs to be mindfully balanced for it to be healthy.

For the article, I decided to add value by interviewing some prominent bloggers, Barry Ritholtz from The Big Picture and Tadas Viskanta from Abnormal Returns; and there was no surprise that they have observed among investors a high correlation between poor investment returns and poor information diets.

The solution is to allocate the attention so as to minimize the potential for poor judgment that often arises out of an overabundance of information.  To begin this healthy allocation, one simply identifies and eliminates the bad sources of information and attempts a less is more, quality over quantity approach to information consumption.  The art of good reading begins by learning the art of identifying not reading the unhealthy sources.

So please read my MarketWatch article, The Price of Paying Attention, and don't forget to vote by clicking on the "Like" button near top of the article's web page.

Thanks!

Comments

[Mikesdesk]

Hi and congratulations on getting to this stage, I'll tick the like box again and wish you every success for the next stage. i like your article "The art of not reading" it's true we must focus in on the good stuff and quickly move on.

[Kent Thune]

Thanks, Mike. I can draw a direct correlation between the end of my subscriptions to all print media and the increase in my clarity of thought. I hope to extend this lesson to as many people as possible: Less is more when it comes to information consumption (and to many other things in life).

Thanks again...