Jason Unger

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How does a member of the media, self-proclaimed online junkie and non-stop Web surfer learn to tune out most of the Internet?

It's not easy, but I did it, and you can do it, too.

In his best-seller The Four-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss advocates 'selective ignorance' and fighting information overload.

When I read the book, I pulled a this-doesn't-apply-to-me, since, well, I work in the media. I have to be overloaded with information — that's my job … right?

Wrong. Here's how I conquered my information overload and learned to love selective ignorance.

Remove Your Distractions

RSS feeds are a great way to get information, but you've likely subscribed to way more than you can handle. Stop checking Google Reader every morning — you're already starting your day off on the wrong foot.

While I love podcasts as much as the next guy, they're just something else to pay attention to and are likely to distract you from the task at hand. Try music instead. Since I started using Pandora instead of iTunes, I'm doing a lot more in a lot less time.

If you need to communicate by IM or email, don't make your self available 24/7. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Check your email at specific times during the day (once on the hour is a good place to start) and only hop on IM after you've gotten through your most immediate tasks.

Surf Smarter

Online, every story is seemingly about the details. The smallest things — or pretty much anything about the iPhone — are unlikely to affect you.

I know, it's difficult to admit that. But it's true. Don't fret if you don't know the details — the big picture is what matters.

When you are getting your information, only go to a few sources. Three of my favorites are Techmeme, Drudge Report, and Google News. Each is a great aggregator of what I'm interested in: technology, politics and mainstream news.

When you do surf smarter, do it at specific times of the day or after you complete a specific task. The worst possible thing you could do is open up a new tab while you're in the middle of something else. You're asking for trouble.

Let Information Come to You

Don't be the town crier — there are plenty of other people doing the work. Let them worry about keeping themselves in the know.

Unless you're actually breaking a news story (which you've presumably acquired in a different way), there's no immediacy to 99.9% of the information online. You don't need to know everything that's happening the moment it happens.

You'll find out what's going on through your network of contacts. If you want to find out more, then you can go look for it.

Ever since I stopped worrying and learned to love selective ignorance, I've mapped out a new project, took on a freelance gig, and found time to play my Wii. It's all about time — what are you spending yours doing?

For a look at what I'm doing with my newfound time, follow me on Twitter.

We ran a fascinating piece in CE Pro a couple of weeks ago, "The 4 Personalities That Lead to Innovation," that I've been meaning to highlight here.

It covers Jeff DeGraff's Competing Values, which looks at the different types of people and personalities required to make change and innovate in a work environment.

Considering that we're all entrepreneurs, understanding the different types of people one will deal with during a lifetime is crucial.

In short, here are the four personality types and what defines them:

Compete Types are intensely competitive. They are totally focused on performance and goals.

Collaborate Types are the "people" leaders who believe in something greater than the business itself and run their companies to reflect shared values.

Control Types represent incremental innovation by taking something that already exists and modifying it to make it better.

Create Types are all about creativity, innovation and growth. This is the profile associated with radical breaks from the past and breakthrough ideas.

Normally, I hate when people are put into a box. I never like to consider myself as an in-the-box person, but then again, that's exactly what my Predictive Index test said about me.

Jason will most strongly express the following behaviors:

- Flexible approach to 'the book;' often bends the rules and does things his own way. An innovative, out-of-the-box thinker who is undaunted by failure.

(I'm going to post my predictive index results in a future blog — look for it later this week.)

In any case, the article highly suggests that, when forming a team or a workgroup, you need one of each personality. And that's not easy to do, especially because we kind of like being around people similar to us.

So what are you? Do you create, compete, control or collaborate?

I have a million ideas for products. Literally.

Ask anyone who has ever worked with me, especially Andrew, who I've dragged along on a million cockamamie plans to strike it big.

(My biggest fault is that I have difficulty following through with new ideas, but that's a whole other story.)

Now when it comes to product ideas, it's easy to think of something that serves little to no purpose and has no chance of making money (see: Web 2.0).

So when I was browsing the DVD rack at Best Buy last year, I came up with what I thought would be a useful and potentially profitable idea.

You see, I always have this problem of not knowing when a "deal" is actually a good deal. Is that TV show boxset actually a good price? Is that thing cheaper here? How would I know?

These days, the answer is an iPhone (no, I did not have the idea for that — someone else did). But if you don't have an iPhone, how can you comparison shop when you're no where near a computer?

Simple: SMS information about the product to a service, which spits back prices from Amazon, Froogle, Buy.com, etc. Then you know if you have a deal or not.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Too bad I was one year too late on it.

iPhone users have their own application for it, pricecheckah. And even Amazon is getting into it, offering products for sale by text message.

Obviously, it's a good idea, if there at least three services doing it (or something like it). I'm not convinced it's a dumb idea to try and run with it, but I'm not nearly as excited about it as I once was.

For a guy who has been making Web sites since he was 14, this might come as a surprise to you, but yes — I like magazines.

Yeah, I know, it's very anti-"new media" of me, but magazines still have a place in the world. (Newspapers do too, but that's another story.)

I actually subscribe to a number of magazines (mostly because I get them for free) and enjoy leafing through them.

Working for a magazine publishing company (running Web sites), I get astounded when print people think their product has any timeliness. It doesn't. You can't run news in magazines because it takes six weeks to produce the product and get it out to your readers.

So what does that distill magazines to? Feature stories, mostly. And big pictures.

Paper will always have an advantage over digital media when it comes to pictures. There's nothing like a two-page spread of a sunset or a slam dunk or the running of the bulls.

Magazines come with an experience that new media doesn't. You sit down, you relax, you kick your feet back and you open up a magazine. It's a completely passive relationship.

Online, the experience is much more active. You can post a comment, blog about it, or just surf away.

Magazines certainly have a place in the new media world. But they can't compete with digital communication when it comes to breaking news and participatory conversations.

It doesn't matter, though. It's a different experience. Not better, not worse. Just different. That's why I like them.

Believe it or not, I'm a manager now. At the ripe old age of 24, I have an assistant Web editor for CE Pro — meaning that things are changing for me and for the site.

So far, things are going well. Steve — the assistant editor — is catching on quick and picking up a lot of the stuff that was slipping through the cracks previously. The site has grown a lot in the past year and we've needed more hands, so he's a welcome addition.

Because of this, my role has changed as well — in addition to doing the things that I need to do, I need to make sure Steve has things to do. There's no shortage of work to be done, but I'm not just looking out for myself anymore; I'm looking out for him, too.

Add into the fact that I'm managing virtually — literally. He's in Boston, I'm in DC. So while I was there for his first few days, the rest of our relationship has been over IM. It's not bad; it's just different. When you're doing things over IM, words matter much more. There are no body signs or emotions you can pick up on — it's only what the words say and mean.

So as he picks up some of the things keeping me from new ventures on the site, I'm working on developing an expanded community and growing our lead-gen content.

Change is good; I'm honestly not sure where I would be if change wasn't always happening. Doing the same thing over and over again is mundane. When people my age are changing jobs every 18 months, I've been with the same company for 3 years (but am now in my third position).

I'm excited for the future.