Wide Funnel, Tight Filter

It’s like a Mark Twain quote at this point—it could have been Shane Parrish, or Patrick O’Shaughnessy, or James Clear, or Morgan Housel, or something the distractedly stoned 60-something at my local AutoZone told me.

Have a wide funnel with a tight filter.

Translation: take a lot of information in, with a general system, because you never know what might light you up. But, have a quick way for filtering that stuff out so you don’t waste time on nonsense or grinding through more work you hate.

It’s a core tenet of having a Personal Archive too.*

Make it a habit to let your curiosity be your guide, which includes cutting stuff off as soon as your gut says, “I’m bored.”

And to be clear, this takes refining.

You could become a social media addict if you take this too literally.

It takes the right directional orientation. For example, I subscribe to way too many podcasts and YouTube channels. I’ll regularly save/like stuff I want to revisit, and then aggressively parse what I’ve saved to actually give anything time. Plus, if something doesn’t catch me relatively quickly, I have to shame about tapping out.

I have a little leeway, especially if it’s a guest or topic I know I’m interested in, but there’s so much content out there, why be bored on purpose unless you’re really starting to get something out of it?

The same applies to books (although I’m more patient and appreciate the “flip forward”) and music (I am not afraid to skip through albums and even songs to see if I can find surprises to convince me to further dig in).

Wide funnel, tight filter, for the win.

*The Personal Archive angle is focused on what you do with whatever lands on the other side of the tight filter, just to be clear. That’s what you want to reflect on. The cool part about keeping the top of your very wide funnel open, however, is that your reflections will also never be stale/overly narrow. It really is like a magic trick. Thanks Mark Twain!

ps. so it’s stuck in your head too, “Get in the zone, AutoZone.” What. A. Jingle.