Curation - When to Filter, When to Dig

Curation truly is a constant activity in life. But what I think not a lot of people realize or embrace is that your role is not fixed.

Sometimes you’re at the consuming end of curation. You want to filter out the noise and focus on what matter most to you.

There’s the obvious sort of curation, having sources you like and trust and expanding from there. That may be a little hard to do when you’re expanding to a new area (or the area itself is new).

But time can also be a great curator, letting the dust settle. You don’t jump too early on the wagon, you might wait a bit, see what sticks, and then inform yourself. That’s what I did with AI at the beginning.

(And what I did with crypto and NFTs. I didn’t invest too much time learning about them, and at the end I didn’t need to. Of course, they’re still around and can be relevant but their hype and applicability have drastically reduced).

On the other hand, sometimes your role is to be the curator. You embrace the fact that you going to spend your time in bad content, lose yourself among some noise, to find the signal.

That shift in perspective has been very valuable to me in avoiding frustration, helping me seek knowledge in a more efficient way, and being reference to my friends and peers about some subjects.

When I’m in signal mode I avoid reading or listening to too many things, I’m more judgy and less open to commit my time with something. That doesn’t mean I’ll not take chances, but I’ll be more mindful of my time and effort.

Other times in my life I seek to be the curator. I understand to find the signal we need to search through the noise. I accept the fact that I might read or watch something I won’t like. I’m more open to taking “risks” and checking novel content, authors and topics.

When I’m at curator mode there’s usually an overall theme. Maybe this month I’m invested in learning about Product Frameworks. Maybe this week I’m willing to find a new tv series to watch.

That way, after all that noise, I might find the signal and know what’s truly good, worth sharing and incorporating in my life.

Tips for navigating and curating life

References are a great source of discovery

That’s how I learned about most of the blogs I follow, one mentioning another. The people you like, probably share a similar taste to you.

Don’t finish everything that you start.

One way I increased the numbers of books I read was by don’t finishing one I was liking. That gave me the freedom to focus on the stuff I was enjoying. Sometimes I do force myself to finish something for a reason or another, but I feel much less obliged to do so

Be curious and embrace weirdness.

Everyone has a specific weird interested or youtube channel they likes to watch. Embracing that is a great way to expanding our horizons. Let’s resist societal pressure against being truly curious

Written by a human