Suriving Information Overload [Part One]

In the interests of limiting information overload, and partly because this post turned in to a bit of a rant, I’ve split this article in to several parts.

A few weeks ago I posted about how I was suffering from information overload. I decided to try and dramatically cut down on my consumption of information. Obviously this idea isn’t new, especially in productivity circles, with the much famed ‘media fast’ concept being coined by Tim Ferriss.

Here are my observations and learnings so far:

The amount of information we consume is directly controllable by ourselves. Aside from those snippets of information that we need to do our day jobs, or research a task that must be done – most of the information that we consume is unnecessary. Obviously there is nothing wrong with consuming all of this information, but there is a clear distinction (although it may not be clear at first) between required information, desired information and obligated information.

Allow me to explain:

1. Required Information
I class required information as that information, data or whatever that you require to do a given task, and more importantly a current rather than future task. It is important to make the distinction there – as you should only consume the information that you need to complete what you are currently working on or else the chances are that you will need to revisit the information which is inefficient use of both your time and attention span. Point to note here – only consume the information that you need to complete the current task.

2. Desired Information
This is information that you want to consume; this could be as it is related to a particular interest or hobby but not because it required to complete any tangible task. They key to this area is to make sure that you don’t control this activity so that it doesn’t take over your other tasks.

3. Obligated information.
This is information that you feel obligated to consume, but actually serves no purpose to further your own priorities. In our working lives there is a hell of a lot of this kind of information. This is why the CC field on email is a complete and utter pain! People CC the world on unimportant emails to justify their position or their worth. You feel that you need to consume this kind of information because if you don’t you might miss something important and be caught out in the future. Chances are that you will miss the odd thing but I doubt it will be disastrous, especially as most workplace ‘emergencies’ are false anyway.

When you think about the information you consume in these three categories, this is how I would suggest you limit your information intake:

1. Only use the required information you need to do the CURRENT activity. Learn to consume the right amount of information, don’t overload yourself with information, as this will only make the task harder to complete.

2. Understand the desired information that you consume because you want to or more specifically because it takes you towards your goals. Be careful not to kid yourself that you want all this information (see blogs and news point below).

3. Cut down 99% of obligated information consumption. I would suggest that you probably obligate yourself to consume far more information than you actually need to. So what if you miss something, it’s not going to be the end of the world is it? Understand the difference between required and obligated information.

In the next part I look at the cutting down blogs and news information.

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• I’ve been working on my new travel blog: World Troubadour – check it out.
  

Image by Will Lion on Flickr via Creative Commons

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