Getting Smarter Without Doing Anything

Is this a joke? Surprisingly, it’s not.

At first thought it seems to be an unbreakable rule that in order to expand our knowledge, we need to take in (”consume”) new information. Unfortunately, finding relevant information and consuming it takes time and effort - especially in today’s world of information overload this can be quite tedious.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we did not have to consume any information and still expand our knowledge as shown in the following picture, therefore sidestepping information overload?

Believe it or not, but there is a way to achieve this. The secret lies in reliable alert services that only inform you if a specific happening has occurred, therefore also telling you something if they keep quiet (so that you know nothing has happened).

One example: you subscribe to an alert service that notifies you if a US tennis player wins a tournament on the ATP tour. If you haven’t received an alert for the last two months and somebody asks you about it, you could tell him that in the last 2 months no US player has won a tournament - without actively following the tennis results.

In other words, you have increased your knowledge over time without having had to consume any information. The beauty of reliable alert services is that they don’t just provide value when they inform you but also if they keep quiet.

Many examples can be found where such alert services would be very useful. The problem today, however, is that it’s not easy to find those alert services. Or very often, they do not exist at all.

NextFeeds.com, a soon-to-be-launched web service, will provide a platform for users to subscribe to a wide range of alert services free of charge and also setup new ones. You can preregister if you want to be informed upon launch.