Just because you’re collecting dots doesn’t mean you’re connecting them.

Information isn’t valuable in itself—the value is in the meaning, the connections.

10 connections >>>>> 100 disconnected dots

Don’t just collect dots—connect them.

The dots are your knowledge, but it’s the connections that represent understanding, insights, wisdom.

Collecting dots is like having a ton of books in your library. It looks cool but doesn’t really change you.

Connecting dots is getting those books in you.

The danger is that we fall for the temptation of mistaking our dots as valuable.

You can have 10 dots with 10 connections—or 100.

Same number of dots, exponentially higher value.

Problem is we have so many tools for collecting dots: easy to save articles from browsers, open 100 tabs, gather 1000 bookmarks, store a million emails.

But connecting dots?

There are tools, sure, but the most important is your own mind.

Those dots won’t connect themselves.

I said the abundance of tools for collecting dots (bits of information) is a problem—for two reasons.

1. It feeds into Collector’s Fallacy (h/t @ctietze):we feel we’ve engaged with info just because we’ve stored it

2. It overwhelms us—we gather far beyond our ability to process

If we think of information as food—collecting the dots without connecting them is like stuffing food down without chewing it or even properly digesting it.

The result? Mental constipation.

(At least physically, though, there’s a hard limit on how much you can consume.)