How many times a day do you feel like there's something you're forgetting but you just can't place your finger on it.
Many of us have no idea what information overload is and are not aware that our internet of today has evolved into one that overloads us with information on a daily basis, which in turn always make us seem forgetful.
We spend hours consuming short form content on social media that will be forgotten in minutes, most of which are in one way or another either good or bad information.
We save links to articles to read later, take screenshots of designs or things we'd like to recreate or get and forget about them. Only time we remember them is when we need to clear our device storage space due to low memory storage warnings.
We have several drafted notes of recipes we'd like to try, things we want to remember and even to-do lists, but these get abandoned as soon as they are created or just rarely visited.
Information consumes the attention of it's recipient so that the more information consumed, the lesser the attention span. The internet was meant to bring information to our reach but it has done not just that, it has also immersed us with so much information that our attention span is now in the pits.
We are immediately bombarded with streams of information the moment we turn on our screens. We try to consume every bit of the information that comes our way, which is why we're constantly exhausted and overwhelmed.
To curb this overload and the effects it has on us, we need to take a step back to filter what we allow to be presented to us. We mustn't be on every social platform or engage in every conversation/argument that spins up every now and then.
The quality of your output depends on the quality of your input.
We need to become more intentional about the information we choose to consume. New trends spring up each day, emails are proliferating by the hour, arguments are ensuing in different threads, groups and forums. All these are happening with or without our involvement.
Pick your information diet wisely. Just as we feed our bodies with food and only the good type, it's our duty and responsibility to select only the good kind of information to consume.
One has to be intentional about doing this. Here are a few tips to help you filter from the overload:
- Choose only a few platforms to frequent.
- Give yourself time limit to avoid over-indulging
- Have a list of open-ended questions you need answers to. Basically about things you're interested in so that your reason for being online would be to find answers, solutions and inspiration to these questions.
- Avoid content that adds no value to you.
References
- "Building a Second Brain" by Tiago Forte
- What is Information Diet