In the Lean/Manufacturing world there are two ways to manage tasks/inventory. One is to pull the tasks/assets and other is to push the tasks/assets.

In Software, maybe i'm wrong but i understand Pulling when you are done with a task and you take the next one based on an actual customer need. Pushing is that the task is assigned to you already by someone else, a forecast or some random priority.

I think this article explain it better: allaboutlean.com/push-pull ( and yes i was wrong )

But this is not related on what im trying to explain in this blog post. I just will use both words to explain how we are getting used to receive/get/learn information in this digital era.

So we know(i believe so) that all information is being pushed into our brains. And im not talking about ads. Im talking that we are too lazy now to get info about anything. And we are getting used to delegate what we need to consume as information to someone else. The problem is that we should not trust someone else to give us the right info. As we might guess everybody has a purpose and/or intention. Maybe someone is there just trying to convince about his/her point or selling something.

So everyday information is pushed into our brains through news, twitter, facebook and even tik-tok which is supposed to be a social network with some random teenagers dancing.

For example in software if you just use twitter in a push-y way. You will get the wrong idea that PHP is the worst language ever, java is dead(again) and all software is done with javascript. And guess what ? Java is still alive and there are backend engineers whom not code in javascript too. But backend engineering is not cool to sell or does not generate too many clicks. So they continue killing poor java every year.

My point is that I don't think this is an efficient way to get information as we cannot focus on anything or find out more about any relevant topic of our interest. As we are constantly being distracted in the most trending topic of the day or the most visited article about a topic. But the worst is that:

There are so much valuable info about something/topics but is not popular or not ranked in top results for some pigeon algorithms !

And im not talking about going to page 200 of google results as a lunatic. But use these "tools" efficiently. Social Networks and Google can be your best tools to get info.

Thus we should consume information in a pull-y way:

So how can we achieve this way of pulling information ?

I think it is as simple as defining what your interests are. And do some research about the topic. And also use our own judgment and not always other people reviews.

It is like when you are in college and you learn about a topic. You get different books and also ask ask different people about it. So you build your own opinion/knowledge about the topic. Thus your opinion is not only based on a tweet of some popular politician or a friend.

Also use the search options in the social networks. For example in twitter you can just use hashtags to get the info that you want. In my case i have found some gems using hashtags instead of twitter influencers with lots of followers.

And finally there are books ! Books are the best way to get info in a "pull" way. And books have a bibliography, remember that ?. So you can research deeply about a topic.

The key lesson here is just to learn that social networks/news/influencers are just like products. And as a products their priority is to sell through getting your attention all the time. Their priority is not giving you the right info(all the time) or nurturing you on having critical thinking. And this is ok.

If you realize this then you need to learn how to use them in a productive and efficient way. Your attention is valuable so use it the right way.

:wq