As people who are interested in personal development, we’re all
seeking out ways to improve ourselves. And there is definitely a ton of
information out there to meet that demand. In fact, there’s so much that
it can be hard to process it all. Ironically, this information overload
is often most responsible for people’s lack of progress.
If you think that having a wealth of information at your fingertips
full of wonderful, new, engaging ideas 24/7 (like the internet) is
always a good thing, think again.
Why Information Overload Will Kill Your Progress
We all know that too much of a good thing turns into a bad thing. And
it’s no exception with information. There are literally thousands of
books and blogs out there devoted solely to bettering the people who
read them. And the truth is, most of them have something good to say.
The problem comes in when we, as consumers, are faced with this gluttony
of information.
Let’s say you wake up in the morning and come across a new post from
your favorite self help blog. “That sounds great!” you think after
reading it, and you feel a little boost in your mood. An hour later, you
decide to sit down and read some productivity tips from a book you’ve
been glancing through lately. “Hmm, interesting,” you say, and then you
get ready for work.
At work the same process continues. You have a meeting on time
management where you learn some more cool tips. That’s great and all,
but the problem is that you don’t have nearly enough time to actually
implement any of these ideas. All you’re doing is collecting ideas, day
in and day out. They’re going in one ear and right out the other.
It just doesn’t work. Here’s how to solve the problem.
How to Eliminate Information Overload and Create Real Progress
One of the best ways to eliminate information overload is to stop
soaking up so much information. It sounds simple, but it’s true. Try to
limit yourself to one specific product/blog post/whatever for each thing
you want to develop.
For example, if you want to learn some time management tricks, then
get a good related book and sit down and study it. Don’t read anything
else while you read that book, especially other nonfiction books. It’s
okay to get your daily dose of inspiration from syedkhurramaali.blogspot.com,
but limit yourself in the time management department only that book.
This will give you time to really absorb the new ideas that you’re
learning.
The second thing to do is to specifically focus only on that idea.
Even though we receive so many different great ideas from lots of
sources each day, we rarely turn those ideas into new habits. Even one
minor habit change a month is enough to significantly change your life
in a relatively short period of time. Therefore, focus on the one
subject that you want to learn and work on making it a habit in your
life.
As you can see, information overload is rampant. We need to combat
this by simplifying and eliminating the information we receive a daily
basis. We can do this by focusing strictly on only that which we want to
learn. After that, we should focus on turning our new understanding
into real habit changes.
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