Where do you search for new information?

episode description:

We are inundated with information and news these days. And since Climate Action is a globally interconnected systems problem, there's a lot of information one needs to know and interact with. That can leave people feeling overwhelmed that they need to master knowledge and skills just to make an impact. So, I asked each of our guests where they receive new information from and how they stay current in an increasingly complex field.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: http://www.leversforchangepodcast.com/

Jud Virden, Associate Laboratory Director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, manages over 1000 engineers, and he relies on talking to people.

Both Jay Bruns, Climate Policy Advisor to the WA State Insurance Commissioner and Suzanne Singer, Chief Engineer of Native Renewables, see talking to industry people as a critical source of information. Both of them gets their information from many respected sources.

Just getting information from multiple sources isn't enough. As Ben Kott, CEO of LightsourceBP Labs reminds us, we have to make sense of our information and suggests that one way to do that is through discussions with peers.

Stacy Flynn, the consummate systems thinker, gave us her trick in synthesizing new information. It's by scanning table of contents of many books at the same time, and drawing connections between them, even before reading the books themselves.

Lastly, Prachi Vakharia, Managing Partner at Womanium, gave a very succinct framework of how to sort through the information and stay current:

So, there you have it - qualified information, synthesized ideas, hearing it from people who are doing the work. Break them out into current events, industrial news, and general knowledge. And lastly, talk to people. Share ideas. Listen. I hope you are able to adopt some of these best practices of staying current and well informed.