This is a follow up article to Auditing my social media use and information consumption.

“Organise your professional life rigorously around your circle of competence. This radical focus will bear more than monetary fruits. Above all you’ll save time, because you won’t keep having to decide where to direct your attention. Knowing your circle of competence is your tool, your scalpel, enabling you to divide sources of information into what’s valuable and what’s not.”
— Rolf Dobelli – Stop Reading the News

I’ve been thinking about this quote more and more these days. If you’ve not heard about the concept of “the circle of competence” below is a good video about it.

I have been thinking about this for a long time. I wrote about the need to be mindful of our information diet. When I got mentally exhausted by Olympics drama on social media, I decided to audit my social media use and realise that I spend a lot of my time – too much of my time – focusing on things outside my circle of competence.

Is this a good use of my time?

NO.

I created this chart to visualize what content would fit in the circles. The ones in purple basically shows how much focus I give on the content. Meaning, I spend a lion’s share of my time on social media browsing and consuming this content.

At first, I wanted to add to each level whether it “benefits my work” or not, but I think that’s not as helpful as “I can control”. So, the red circle represents what I know and can control, but the green circles represent subjects that I cannot control.

Therefore, it makes more sense to focus on the subjects in the red circle as it’ll bring the most benefit to me in my life.

You are probably wondering why I placed “Chinese dramas” in the red circle, but I think it could actually bring me some financial benefits one day if I ever want to monetise the content I’m putting out. (Maybe in my retirement years!)

Currently, it does help me learn Mandarin, so you can say that Chinese dramas will indirectly help me in that goal, and increasing my proficiency in the language will definitely help improve my marketability.

Also, it’s damn fun and totally improving my mental health.

Not sure about the part about managing a 68k Reddit Chinese drama sub though LOL.

This circle is a sobering indictment that I’ve been misplacing my focus when it comes to information consumption. Geopolitics is, unfortunately, at a primal level, entertaining. The content around geopolitics is meant to push our tribal buttons. Worse, not only do I consume geopolitical content, I also release some content about it due to this overpowering curiosity, but I don’t think I’m benefiting anyone.

Also, after writing the little journal entry about my attempt to find out more about the British riots, I have to come to the sad conclusion that I’ll never, ever, ever find out the 100% truth about an event because truth is relative especially in the cruel world of geopolitics.

Also, let’s face it, I’m not an expert. People like Kishore Mahbubani and George Yeo can certainly call themselves that because they were actual government officials that worked in the diplomatic circles.

I, on the other hand, is nothing more than a glorified amateur researcher and consumer of too much Youtube videos on geopolitics.

Sure, I could tell people what I stand for, but how does that help anything beyond making me feel good about myself and signal to others what a virtuous person I am (or devil, depending on what political side they’re on).

On top of all this, political discourse in the Internet and social media age is abysmally broken. It destroys relationships and societies more than it builds. Worse, it could cause political violence.

Do I really want to be exposed and to be part of this unproductive and destructive cycle?

But I must confess, geopolitical news is addictive! I guess there’s something in our brains that craved the idea of being “our side winning” or maybe we just like being scared to death about World War III constantly.

However, all this attention on a topic that is out of our circle of competence is hours taken away from subjects that could actually improve your life, such as studying about improving your health and self care, becoming an expert and influencer in your field and managing your finances better and finally getting debt free.

If there’s one time that I did the whole information consumption right, was that period when I hyperfocused on personal finance content, career optimization and minimalism.

All these topics helped me pay off all my debts, including my mortgage, become debt free, live in a way that I enjoyed and choose the career that aligned with my values.

I now live the life I want.

So, it’s time to go back to that.