Don’t Just Collect. Consume.

I have a bit of a problem when it comes to information. I tend to resemble someone on the TV show Hoarders. I have loads of PDF files on my laptop. Some are on my iPad. Some are on my desktop PC. I even have some on a little flash drive I carry around in my pocket. Of course, I have plenty of books. Just for networking related stuff, I have a pile at home as well as a good size collection at work. Then there are the URL’s. Every day I save all of the valuable URL’s I have discovered from Twitter and RSS feeds and put them in their own little folder with the date as the name under my bookmarks in Firefox. If I follow you on Twitter and you post a link, odds are I have looked at it and bookmarked it if it is something that pertains to my interests. If I read your blog, and odds are I do, I will bookmark various posts of yours and at some point go back and reference them. You see, I don’t always have time to read everything during the day. Additionally, if it is a post like this, or this, I will have to go back and read it all when I have a considerable amount of free time.

Therein lies the problem. I never seem to have time to go back and sift through every thing like I had planned. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have the time. I just get caught up in all the new links that are posted on Twitter every day and wind up spending study time skimming new blog posts or digging through websites. There’s a lot of good info out there that people are sharing. I suppose I could limit my intake to just routing and switching, but what fun would that be? Besides, I don’t want to be ignorant of the other things that are out there. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that I had absolutely nothing to do with voice, storage, wireless, and security. Times are changing, and changing fast.

There’s just so much out there that needs to be absorbed. Just when I think I have a handle on most of the Cisco product line, they go and release UCS, and the Nexus 1000V, and the ASR1000’s, and Clean Air. It never ends. There is always a new technology or some new hardware to read up on.

The realization I have come to is that there is no use in collecting information if you are not going to use it. All of those PDF’s, books, and URLs will do me no good if I never use them. At the same time, if I stop keeping up with what is current, I will fall behind and be of less help to my employer. I won’t be able to effectively design anything because I won’t be aware of what the possibilities are.

One of two things has to happen. The first option is that I can really narrow down the focus to just the things that directly pertain to my job. That will alleviate some of the information I have been hoarding. The second option is to start dedicating a bigger portion of my day to information consumption. I think option two is the best one as I can’t see myself ignoring products and technologies that I am not using today due to the fact that I may be using them tomorrow. Besides, it’s more fun when you have a wide range of technologies to keep up with as opposed to a handful.

I don’t know how everyone else handles their technical knowledge maintenance. If you happen to have a tried and true method of keeping up with all things networking, I would love to hear about it.