I’ve blogged before about my massive information overload problem. I’ve decided it’s officially a “problem” and two of my 9 quarterly goals involve tackling my information overload.
2. I will finish all my partially-finished books. Currently, I have 7 books that are all partially finished.
According to The Economist too much information begins to decrease effectiveness. In their article, they described giving a horse-racing handicapper five pieces of information versus 40. The successes of predictions was worse when given the 40 pieces of information versus the five.
Mark Hurst, the author of Bit Literacy wrote an entire book on how to manage massive information overload and make technology work for you, rather than you being enslaved to technology and the tyranny of the urgent. Given my Goal #2 above, I will not be reading the book just yet but it sounds like a potential fix for my information overload woes.
In a recent post on his blog, Ben Casnocha, the uber-boy wonder who wrote the book “My Start-Up Life” said “I see less and less value keeping up day-to-day”.
The author of “The 4 Hour Work Week” (which I haven’t read) suggests not reading anything besides the headlines to avoid getting overwhelmed with information. While this seems a bit drastic to me, it goes hand in hand with the idea of allowing free space in your head.
This will end up being a bit like my Clean Desk goal– two steps forward, two steps to the side but ultimately a bit of forward movement over time.
