[SpaceBar]

Information that has no use is useless information.

That is circular reasoning. Often information that appears to have no immediate perceived use or practical value proves to be quite useful down the road as more pieces of the puzzle become visible or circumstances change.

[Steel Wolf]

You are correct, but that’s not exactly where I was going with that.

Some information is of immediate practical use. Other information is of potential use later. Still other may be true, but irrelevant to the issue at hand.

As a young analyst, I once presented a superior with some data on a project I was working on. He said, “Look, this ain’t trivia night. Why are you showing me this?” I was taken aback, partly out of pride, but mostly because he was completely right. I spent a lot of time and effort researching something that was interesting and true but not actionable. In other words, I was wasting time.

Time and effort are scarce resources. There is no virtue in spending them on non productive lines of effort.