Believe me, if you haven't known them before, you'll thank me. They're packed with extremely valuable information. They give us the chance to learn the stuff our parents and grandparents never knew and schools forgot to teach us.

I've always been an infovore (a term I've learnded from (c) Mitch Joel). My lifelong drive is to understand how the world works. Because of that I'm reading like crazy and I consume too much information, some of it being junk. Does it sound familiar?

Information Overload Antidote

There's millions of books published each year. Most of us regular mortals won't be able to read more than around 2000 of those in our lifetime. There's also crazy amount of content being created and crying for our attention each day. How do you choose what's worth learning?

Because of the way our brain works it's easy to chase after the fresh and the new instead of pursuing the wise and tested. Especially that the latter is often less noisy and less shiny.

So the list below is an antidote to our biases. The next time you feel an urge to check the news or your social feed, try one of the sites below instead.

1 The Book of Life

The Book of Life This is a book that is alive. In many ways. It tackles all the hard things we encounter life: being yourself, relationships with others, capitalism, etc. It combines the knowledge from psychology, philosophy and even art. Powerful and practical spirituality for everyone. Not available on paper because it grows and improves all the time.

2 Farnam Street

Farnam Street This is about acquiring knowledge and making it practical. Starting from what it's worth to learn, through how to read a book up to how to think. The site features a whole section on mental models and covers such topics as how to make decisions, innovation, leadership.

Knowledge has a half-life. The most useful knowledge is a broad-based multidisciplinary education of the basics. These ideas are ones that have lasted, and thus will last, for a long time. And by last, I mean mathematical expectation; I know what will happen in general but not each individual case. (Source: 'How To Think')

3 Brain Pickings

Brain Pickings All about books and ideas connecting them. Maria Popova makes some amazing connections between distant books and works of art. She draws arcs that span ages, different schools of thought and authors. All this may seem meta, but the way Maria writes is approachable and the enthusiasm for books and reading is contagious. This is definitely a way to understand the world better, while paying attention to its beauty.

Lifelong Learning

The bright and hardworking people behind those sites are improving them constantly. I think they are supposed to be read slowly, article by article. I give myself time to think through those things and to incorporate that knowledge into my life.

There has to be more. I'm sure there are other equally great sources of knowledge. Let us know about them in the comments.