The low information diet is a concept used in Timothy Ferriss’s new book, The 4-Hour Workweek.

If you think about it, information is the bane of our lives. It pursues us everywhere, via billboards and Blackberrys, cell phones and laptops. Information never stops, it seeps into our brains, jams out all useful activity and crashes any tendency to creativity. Most of it is useless, irrelevant, biassed, deceitful, deceptive and damaging to our health.

The problem is, information makes us feel important, connected, in league with “where it’s at”. If we don’t get any, we’re sure to look inadequate at the XYZ Conference. We never stop to think that the XYZ Conference is just another vehicle for more useless information, as is that so-vital podcast, video hookup or blog post (present post excepted because of its essential nature).

Ferriss’s chapter with the same title as this post is the best eight-page sequence in his book. Alone it will change your life. If you’re a Techmeme groupie or a news junkie, read it and learn about “selective ignorance” and the trial one-week media fast.

Refuse to be mediated, concentrate on that personal task in hand. Only your work and activity is worthy of your attention. Everything else may be relevant to others, but will kill your effectiveness and utility if you indulge in it.

This is a very interesting book which makes some contribution to the goal of a more efficient future. Don’t be put off by Ferris’s extravagant CV, you don’t have to do all of that. Four hours of Ferris should be enough to transform your working week. Maybe even reduce it to 20 hours or so.