Let me start by saying this: I love the Internet. It’s amazing how much information is available, how easily I can connect to others (even those who are hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away), and the sheer range of information is at my disposal. There is an incredible range of opportunities available online, and the Internet is powerful, powerful tool to doing almost anything you could want to do. (Including spending time enjoying Yakezie member posts.)
But it is not without its downsides. That range of information, nearly the entirety of human knowledge from all of recorded history, is available online. With this level of information, it’s easier than ever to find yourself deluged with more information than you can handle. The Information Age we live in has brought with us its own troubles, including
Information Overload
Yup, the problem with having access to so much information is that it’s more than possible to find yourself completely overwhelmed by what you are taking in. Between computers, television, radio, notebooks, and cell phones (increasingly capable of doing almost everything those computers can do), to say nothing of older-fashioned options like books and magazines, it’s hard to find any time when you aren’t deluged with information of all types.
As a result, it’s increasingly common to find yourself simply overwhelmed by how much information you face each day. Trying to retain even a small portion of what you read and watch can leave you mentally drained, too tired to accomplish even the most basic tasks. It’s not a good place to be mentally, particularly when you find yourself with so much to do you barely think you’ll have time to complete it all (another frequent trait in the Information Age).
This information overload can lead to a cycle where you find yourself seeking information, absorb much more than you need (particularly when you get sidetracked and find yourself following other information leads), are overwhelmed, and stop to regain your focus only to discover that you didn’t get what you needed and have to spend even more time and energy searching for the data. Much as computers faced with too many programs open at the same time become slower and less able to function, we as humans are only able to do and learn so much in a given sitting before our brains need a break (trust me, I’ve experienced that need for a break many times myself).
Keeping Yourself From Being Overloaded
Now, I realize there aren’t very many good methods of completely avoiding all the information currently floating around out there; not too many people want to follow in the footsteps of Ted Kaczynski and live in a cabin out in the woods, completely isolated from the rest of humanity. But while we might need to retain access to information, we don’t need to suffer from information overload in the process. How can we do so? Why, by sticking with some of the following advice, of course:
Keep Your Sources of Information to a Minimum: It’s tempting to get information from everywhere possible, but trying to keep track of everything can be overwhelming. Instead, keep track of what you subscribe to, the websites you visit regularly, and the books you try to read; put too much on your plate, and it’s a sure way to find yourself overwhelmed. Find a relatively small number of websites, magazines, and other sources to follow, and resist the temptation to add more to your list (unless you are willing to cut out some of your existing sources to make some room). While you’re at it:
Don’t Feel the Need to Read Everything: I’ll admit, this is one of my biggest weaknesses; there’s something in my head that says that all the information I find should be read, considered, and given a response. But trying to do so in the era when nearly the whole of recorded history can be found in the course of mere minutes leaves you with far too much information and far too little time. Resist the urge to follow every single link that you see and read through every article (unless of course they’re Yakezie member articles; those are always worth reading).
Learn to Skim and Search Out the Important Information: You might have the habit of reading through everything you find when searching for a given subject in complete detail, looking for the best possible answer to your problem. While this might be the most thorough way to handle things, it’s far from the best; there’s far too many groups and individuals who know how to twist the search results for most subjects to display what they want, not necessarily what is best for your needs (which is why so much time has to be put into SEO work for the rest of us). Instead, learn to skim through the information provided, looking at the subjects covered and the manner in which they are handled, and find the most important data for your needs. (There are plenty of tools available to help you cut down the amount of information you need to search to find what you seek.)
Set Goals and Limits: There’s no way you can cut off all information, even if you wanted to do so (and few people who would want that). Instead, you should goals for what you want to achieve before you expose yourself to information rich areas, either online or off. You should also limit the amount of time you devote to any given source of information; if you don’t set a distinct start and stop time, you’ll notice numerous times when you lose time while assumption of too much new information. Speaking of limits…
Know When to Give Yourself A Break From Information: You’re still going to be exposed to a lot of information, every time you go online, turn on the television, or even open a magazine. Instead of constantly trying to deal with the endless flow of information around you, you should try to have the occasional break from information built into your schedule. Include an hour or two each day in your schedule, or possibly a day each week, where you cut yourself off from all sources of information. Limit yourself to things like relaxing, spending times with your family, and if you can’t stay away from media entirely, stick with non-fiction stories and movies to keep your brain relaxed. (It doesn’t hurt to take a hacksaw to the unwatched media you have accumulating while you, to boot.) When you resume your information-heavy routine, you’ll be all the fresher for it.
How do you keep yourself from being overloaded with information? How have you limited the amount of information you take in each day?
This is something I go through ALL the time! Like you, I read everything thoroughly (it’s actually part of my job to read everything carefully) and it sometimes drives me to the point of info overload. My head swims with a ton of different info, but it gives me a lot of thoughts and options to sift through. It really comes in handy when I’m researching some sort of pain or sickness, and I read about a ton of different ideas from people. Sometimes you have to learn how to weed through what’s right and what’s really ridiculous, since anyone can post things on the Internet.
Great post!
Yup, it’s always good to develop a BS meter, so you can figure out what information is worth keeping in your mind, and what information you need to reject. Here’s hoping your job doesn’t leave you too burnt out.
Being in graduate school and working full time (and blogging), I have learned the necessity to skim and retain information even when I am not reading it fully. It’s remarkable to think how this might affect our memory. A lot more short term memory seems to be used than long-term. Not that it’s all bad, just an observation.
I certainly can commiserate with trying to keep up with blogging and work while attending grad school. I think a lot of people in modern society have learned to skim material, keep it only as long as needed, and then forget it to fill their minds with new material. I know I’m the same way, as well.
Outside of my normal blogging rounds, I tend to stick to about 2-3 reputable news media outlets for my information. This definitely helps me from getting overloaded.
I think another important thing to point out is that not only can we get overloaded by information, but how much of it is actually wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to lookup information pertaining to my job or personal finance and had to second guess where the author got their facts (or if they even bothered to check).
Sounds like you have a good plan to keep yourself from being overwhelmed; it’s definitely easy to get overwhelmed if you don’t limit your sources sharply. You’re also right that many of the sources available now (including some of the most popular, sadly) are not nearly as factual as we’d hope. All the more reason to limit yourself to those you know will be accurate and won’t focus solely on selling you something.
Roger, in this incredibly digital world, you highlighted how important it is to use discipline and time management so you are not sucked into the abyss of technology. Great tips and advice.
I’m a financial advisor and it’s unbelievable the things I run into these days because of the power of the internet. I think it’s great for people to have information and be educated, but sometimes it does way more harm than good.
True enough; one of the problems with everyone being able to share their thoughts is that it’s easy to come across plenty of information that is highly biased, if not just plain false.
I suffer from information overload as well. My love for learning certainly doesn’t help. When I have a task I need to complete, to keep me focused, I set the timer on my phone. I commit to doing one thing for a predetermined period of time. Doing so helps keep me focused.
Sounds like a great plan, Shawanda. I set alarms every half-hour on my cell phone alarm, to help keep me on track when I’m trying to get major projects done. It helps to remind me when I’ve let myself drift too far away from the tasks at hand.
I am very much working on “Don’t feel the need to read everything”. One of my weaknesses, but I have slowly realized that I don’t owe it to the book, magazine, blog post, etc. to read through everything that comes my way. It is quite liberating!
I can certainly sympathize; I’ve subscribed to way too many magazines and purchased way too many books over the past few years, to the point where I have an entire bookcase devoted to my ‘To Be Read’ materials. I’ve been trying this year to cut that amount down to something much more manageable.
There are times that reading too much does not only cause information overload but also confusion on which is correct or not, so I limit my reading to only a few reputable blogs and 2-3 news sites.
Very true; while we read to try to learn more and clarify things in our minds, it’s far too easy to end up even more confused if the sources we read disagree. It’s always good to have a few legitimate resources you follow.
I find that you can give something a chance by reading a bit and if after 30 seconds it’s not what you thought you can go on to something else. That is how we used to audition people and so that is how I read.
Not a bad approach; if you’re a fairly swift reader, you can usually get through a pretty decent amount of an article in 30 seconds. It’s keeping up the discipline to do so all the time that I think gets to most people.
I enjoy reading, but I will get overloaded if I try to read everything. I stick to skimming, but it can be hard to keep up! Especially in the Yakezie Network. There are so many great blogs to read, and so little time!
Very, very true; while skimming can help, it doesn’t do you much good if you are still presented with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of new items to read each day. And yes, there are far too many good Yakezie posts for many of us to keep up with all of them.
I also have a huge problem reading blogs. I’ve tried sticking to just a few, but then I get to the comments and there are new bloggers that I haven’t read….so I think “just one more….” Slippery slope.
It is a slippery slope; there are too many good bloggers out, many of whom are still getting themselves established. Since I remember what that was like (and for that matter, am still working to improve my own standing), I try to support less popular bloggers as much as possible, but there are simply too many, particularly in the personal finance field, for me to be able to follow all of them.
Thanks, Barbara; it’s always important to remember how easy it is to be deluged with information when all you have to do is click ‘one more link’…
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments, everyone; it’s always nice to know that my writing has made people think!
Very interesting article. This will be quite useful for anyone starting out. I have found it quite productive to create a mind map on my ipad and plaster it on my desktop background. I write what day I am going to work on it so that I can use it as a schedule. If I see something intriguing, I open up EverNote and clip whatever it is and send it to my base folder called “Inbox”. Then I schedule time each day for “education” and sort these ideas into their appropriate folders once read. Once I started doing this, I have been really crushing my goals and am now twice as productive. Thanks for the awesome post!
Easier said than done. All sound very rational and matter of choice. I have been finding that it is an addiction though. So – still trying….
This is actually awesome timing because I just sat down away from the internet for a break. Today has been an office heavy day for me so I’ve been staring at the interwebs for far to long. So I got up to move around. The biggest takeaways for me here are to almost standardize where you get your info from and make each place you visit on the web impactful – not just click jump to click jump. If it’s when you have to be productive goals and guidelines are great to to keep you focused and on task. Then on your own time you can zombie surf the net.
It is far too easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of information our there, and it seems natural to want to try and take it all in. Unfortunately this isn’t possible and from my perspective it always leaves a little nagging thought in the back of my mind that I might have missed something vitally important. It is like having an OCD for wanting to continue fishing for more information, but thankfully it seems like I’m not the only one, and people are trying to beat the information overload trap. Guess I better join the trend. I’ve one helpful bit of advice though, try http://unifiedinbox.com/ for a way to manage your digital media communication mediums (email, social media etc), you can also use it collaboratively in teams too, reducing workload and increasing productivity :-)
I’m plugged in a LOT but I try to take breaks, especially between my day job and when I get home and have dinner. I also take at least one day a week where I don’t do any blogging at home and try not to be on my laptop. It’s usually a day when I have an exercise class which works out well.
What’s great about my job is that except when I’m on breaks during the day, I can’t be “plugged in” because I’m busy doing construction or fixing people’s houses, etc.! It’s nice havinga built in “unplug” with my job.
Facebook and Youtube are the devils ;)
I think most people have the problem of reading too much and not doing enough. The internet makes this problem even worse with all the promises of how to makecash easily etc. People get addicted to trying to find the holy grail method to riches, instead of just putting the work in. They can spend just as long trying to find an easy way as they could have done earning it properly.