Trendsletter #5 - Avoid Information Overload, Track Trends & Ideas Easily 💡📈
Hello Reader!
Have you ever wondered about trends and in a quest of knowing what's next you entered the word in your favourite search engine?
I know that some professionals do (they pleaded guilty to me lately). Why would they do that? Lack of time, lack of confidence, inspiration failure, difficulty to cope with overload of information among other reasons..
I did the exercice and received 3,250,000,000 results in 0.67 seconds. It is even less inspiring, isn't it? Entering Trend in the search engine the is completely misguiding because
- Results that appeared are mostly from high SEO rank score not necessary cutting edge ideas nor necessary trusty content
- Results are from past data collected not future oriented.
- Quite frankly 3,250,000,000 is too much to digest🤮
And the last dot brings me to the subject of today: Information overload!
In today's context, we consume information everywhere: on the tv, radio, via screens; social media, webinars, exchanges and newsletters (like this one). The amount is way higher than the amount a human brain can digest and make sense out of. It is said that daily. It is said that human consumes more than 34 GB per day!
So how to make sense of all of this and management the overflow of information and images that are sent your way daily? I highly suggest you organize your research based on the subject of interest and your niche & here's how:
- Trash the information that is not relevant. Unsusbrice, unfollow whom or whatever isn't valuable. Making the conscious choice of only expose yourself to valuable quality information. Marie Kondo of information if it doesn't spark you joy, let it go! By doing so you not only clear your time, mind and space you help others produce less.
- Create what works for you, what hour specifically, what workflow. Find a specific way to track trends and your ideas coming out without losing track of it. Feel free to use my resource list to get started on where to look.
- Integrate the necessary plug-in, the shortcuts or review your space to have an ergonomically idea ready living space. (tools on that little further down)
- Summarize the trends and see how it makes sense in a macro lens. For the analytical minds, this canvas from Trend Watching is also very useful to identify what is worth.
With time and proof of success your confidence in information gathering and decluttering will give you highsight! ✨
| Need a little push? |
Tools to Track Trends
To cut through the noise and go straight to the point by filtering information.
Let me tell you this: you are not always ready to receive the information, the best way is to classify it until appropriate timing. If it takes less than 5 minutes to digest do it on the spot, otherwise save it for later and close that tab (it puts an unnecessary pressure otherwise).
Let me tell you another thing: This tool list isn't an invitation to add more to your information basket or to add to the pool of to do list. They are pro recommendations (you can even save them for later).
✏To track your ideas in words you can use good old pen and paper, Post-it or Notes app, Google keeps, Evernote, Notion & +
🖼️To track your ideas in pictures you can use a physical moodboard, an online moodboard tool like Miro, a Pinterest board or the picture app of your phone.
ℹ️To keep the flow of information digestible, I recommend Feedly , newsletters organized in folders are also a gold mine for you niche, see my personal favourites here.
💾To save it for later (more than 5 minutes) you can use Getpocket again personal favourites. You can also take advantage of the integrated save for later options on most of the platforms; Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, & +
+ These 1, 2 websites summarizing trend reports from different organizations (cutting duplicates and avoid you to give your email to download it!)
Agenda
📅 February 24th, 7pm Webinar with Speculative futures Montreal - Thrick or Trend? Making Sense of Global Trends with Two Local Forecasting Experts (online) -> Tickets
📅 February 27th afternoon Concordia Fashion Business Organisation- Pandemic impact on Fashion Trend Forecasting
📅 March 3rd, 1pm at the DX3 conference - Imagining the future - a collective workshop -> Tickets
🎥Watch replay of my conference: Demystify Trends - An overused word in a saturated world
| Book your Next Event date |
In case you missed it
Well, you haven't missed much in the media lately... Stay tune for soon-to-be released interviews that happened in the last months!
☺️
Stay warm & stay safe Reader!
Marie-Michele Larivée
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