There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.
J.R.R. Tolkien
I feel overwhelmed by the amount of information I need to consume. Out of a personal frustration with the limitations of existing document types, I have been exploring new ways to organize and present information. You start off by seeing all information in the document in an abstracted form. This gives you a “lay of the land”. This is useful both to quickly develop a mental map of the contents, but also to explore in the case of unfamiliarity. Then you can zoom in and get more detail. Because of the content’s organization, I find it easier to navigate and skim, ignoring the things I already know or don’t care about, and quickly focusing on the things I want to extract. I find I can more efficiently consume the information in a database, a text document, or a curriculum when it is presented in this way.
THOMAS CZERNIAWSKI 