Online Learning Per Minute Ratio
What is your learning per minute ratio when online? By online I mean on the Internet. I deeply value learning, and spend most of my free time continuing to learn as much about many things as possible. This is why trying to measure how much I get to learn per minute when online is interesting to me :)
From my initial analysis here is a list of sites/applications I use, in order of my learning per minute ratio:
1. Google Reader - my RSS feeds themselves are probably worth their own post, but in general I can get a great glimpse of what is interesting by scanning my RSS feeds.
2. Twitter - the more time I spend on Twitter the more nuggets of information I find. I am not following that many people but following the trends is surprisingly effective.
3. Email - more and more things that are important to me are arriving in my inbox every day. Companies and products are maintaining a connection with me through email. So every minute I am reading email I am learning about people or things that are important to me.
4. The Economist - subscribe to the paper edition, but find myself listening to or reading the online edition quite a bit. The audio edition is fantastic for doing errands - you can get through half the magazine in three hours without even noticing. Even if my retention is less when multi-tasking while listening I am still picking up more than if I didn't have the magazine or was listening to Pandora.
5. NPR - this is a super broad category, but for me it mostly means "Morning Edition" and "This American Life". Both programs are available on the iPhone and are free. Listening to "Morning Edition" while getting ready in the morning is a great way to be plugged into the days news in a very passive and entertaining way.
6. Wikipedia - after weeding through lots of articles that are not entirely related to what I want to learn about, there is plenty of information that is relevant and I enjoy learning from the site.
7. LinkedIn - every time I come across someone I look them up in Linked In. I do this for companies too to try to see if I can find out more about the people that work there. Each profile provides insight into the company/person/etc.
Surprisingly what is not on the list: Facebook. I learn almost nothing when using Facebook. Facebook provides tons of information about people and things going on in their lives but I rarely feel that I am learning anything about them from using the site.
This list isn't exhaustive but it jumped into my head. I find myself constantly trying to learn more and as great as the Internet is a tool I was surprised to realize how much value I derive from Twitter vs how little I derive from Facebook.
