You Are What You Eat: The Low Information Diet

I recently did something which I never thought I’d find myself to be doing: cutting back on information. For years I wanted to stay on the cutting edge, I laughed at those that weren’t up-to-date and have spent many restless hours trying to cram in just a bit more information before my was over. I found out I was wrong…

In my mind and experience, I’ve found two things to be true with absorbing too much information:

• Choice paralysis

• Information overload

Although we all strive to learn and grow, it simple isn’t feasible if we plan to take action. Allow me to explain.

Problem: Choice Paralysis

Choice paralysis is a simple enough concept to wrap your head around: it’s when you have too many choices so you choose nothing instead. This happens all the time with your buying decision; you look at a wall of products and feel so overwhelmed with choices that you convince yourself to just move on.

Choice paralysis has infinitely increased due to the Internet. With billions of web pages and people in a constant struggle to share their content you feel so overwhelmed that you shut down.

In the bigger picture, choice paralysis has negative effects on your goals.

With every new website you find, web page you read, tweet you take in and video you watch; you see others doing a skill that peaks your interest. This happens on a daily basis so you end up bouncing from subject to subject. You never really get into the meat of the skill – you only skim the surface.

In your goals for life, just skimming the surface will make you a jack of all trades, a master of none. Not only will you be frustrated at trying to attach yourself to a skill while bouncing around but mentally you’ll feel like you’re falling behind as you see someone highly specialized get noticed.

Problem: Information Overload

Problem two is very much like the first in many ways; when overloaded with information you begin to find patterns and even become absorbed in them.

For example, if you wanted to learn a new hobby or skill, you’d begin searching for every bit of information you can find on the web then you’d listen to people within the field, maybe watch a few videos or listen to podcasts, you may even buy information products related to what you want to learn.

At that point, however, you effectively overloaded your mind to the point that you really don’t know where to start were all you had to do, in the beginning, is take the first step and learn as you go.

Solution: The Low Information Diet

I touched on this recently with the rantish ‘Your Comments Suck‘ post where I described that if we don’t add value, we shouldn’t bother doing it. In many ways, the low information diet plays along these same lines.

(To best describe this process, I’m going to use recent examples of actions I’ve taken).

Twitter

It began with Twitter. Twitter is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but when you follow a few hundred people (maybe thousands) you simply get too overloaded with information and chatter. Not only do you lose connections with those that you want to follow but it warps your sense of information intake – you end up clicking on links you truly don’t care for just to peak your interest.

So what I did was go through my entire Twitter list and began unfollowing anyone I didn’t have a true connection with. I went based solely on memory because if I can recognize a person based on their avatar or name than I know I have contact with them. I effectively went from nearly 700 people I was following down to 70.

I was shocked to see how infrequent my status updates were; even still it seems like a shock but you know what? I’m not immensely distracted by Twitter anymore and the people I talk to seem to be more interesting, overall.

RSS Reader

I use Google’s RSS reader to manage my blog subscriptions but the other day when I logged in I felt it was time to clean it up. I was sitting at over 250 blogs in my subscription even though I maybe read 30 of them – insanity!

So I went through; I removed any blog that I didn’t frequent and only left a few extra which I thoroughly enjoy their content (but don’t comment or interact that often). You know what? I no longer feel the need to obsessively check my RSS feed anymore – this directly gives me more time each day to create content.

Facebook/MySpace/Whatever

First up, Myspace is dead. I haven’t checked it in months and maybe login twice a year now – it’s not a concern.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a tricky social network to walk away from but I never really had a problem not logging in. I do like to check status updates but you won’t catch me playing Farmville all day. I have a set time where I check my Facebook during the day – during my ‘wind down’ period after work and before I start my projects at night – without FB in the way, I’m focused as hell.

As for everything else that has seem to have become a “task”, I’ve created a list in which I set 30 – 45 minutes to accomplish each day and afterward – that’s it. I try not to go back to these little things until the next day; this stops me from constantly checking updates, stats, etc. It feels really good to just get down and work.

So what does this all do?

Without all those mentally taxing ‘tasks’ (I will call them tasks because they’re more obsessive now than fun), I’m able to freely focus on my own projects without feeling overwhelmed with information, paralyzed by choice and distracted by online media.

I never thought I’d go this way because whenever I met someone that didn’t stay current I would (literally) consider them a geezer but ya know what? Maybe they have it right. You don’t need information 24/7/365. You need action.

That’s not to say you don’t stop learning – it means you should take an ‘a la carte’ method where the only time you go out of your way to learn a new skill is when you actually need to apply it to your current project.

Squeegee off those mental cobwebs and free yourself from the overload.

I give you this challenge: Go through your social profiles, RSS, daily ‘tasks’ and make the effort to cut back – realize that you don’t have to treat them like a job instead of the entertainment as they are – when you finally have the time to work on your projects, you’ll be thanking yourself for starting the low information diet.

Image by Enichkin