Deep Research: Mastering the Information Age

In the age of information abundance, you'd think we'd all be experts by now. Yet, we seem to be drowning in a pool of shallow knowledge.

My friend Baxter recently said, "If you're truly committed to a depth of knowledge, it's so hard to do that if you're not repeating and getting repetitions of ideas."

This observation strikes at the heart of a modern conundrum: Why, with unlimited information at our fingertips, do we struggle to develop true expertise?

The problem is not the availability of information, but in how we consume it. We've become information grazers, nibbling at countless topics without ever truly digesting any of them. It's the intellectual equivalent of a diet consisting entirely of appetizers – temporarily satisfying, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Optimize your mental bandwidth

Think of your mind as a computer with limited RAM. Every tweet, notification, and snippet of news consumes a portion of that precious resource. Before you know it, you're left with a jumble of half-formed ideas and no capacity to process them deeply.

Be ruthlessly selective about your information diet. Treat your attention as the scarce resource it is. This might mean setting strict limits on social media use or cultivating the ability to say "no" to the constant barrage of content vying for your attention.

To hack your way to expertise requires you to become an information machine. Knowledge is nothing when the “nutritional facts” of what you’re consuming are empty calories.

All great ideas are found by consuming high quality information at high volumes.

The voracious appetite for knowledge

Zach Perret (Co-founder & CEO of Plaid) was his rabid energy to learn. John Anderson (ex-Head of Payments) noted, “He reads maniacally, he writes a lot. It’s very similar to what I experienced with Zuck. You can sit and explain a problem and maybe it’s something I’ve spent three months of my career on, and in 45 minutes, Zach will be an expert on it.”

The key here isn't just consumption, but active engagement in research.

Perret is not alone in this hunger. All great founders, investors, and inventors have it. Warren Buffet was asked how to prepare for a career in investing. Pointing to a stack of papers and reports his response was, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

Regardless of how much information you need to consume to apply learnings, you still need a research process to uncover this information.

The anatomy of effective research

Since July 2022, I’ve been consistent in researching different topics about decision making, creativity, and innovation while writing about these ideas. I took my research process a step further in August 2024, working as a Research Fellow at Contrary Research.

My research process up until now has been purely subconscious. The process is ever-evolving as new tools get added to my toolbox. In an effort to publish “half-baked thinking”, this is a guide to making the research more rigid.

To help your research process improve I’ll dive into three key areas of great research:

• Principles
• Process
• Tools

Process and tools are closer to fashion. What works today may be impractical tomorrow. However, the principles are timeless no matter what your research process becomes.