Hello, digital junkie! Excuse me? Lol…never mind.
A quick question for you: Can you last for one full hour without looking at some sort of a screen be it a mobile phone, tablet, TV, laptop or PC?
Very difficult, isn’t it?
We live in an age where we have become addicted to screens.
Most of us most of the time are digitally connected with one another regardless of our physical location, our age or our occupation. Every home is wired, and everyone is plugged-in breathing information day in and day out.
There are now over 1.2 billion people on Facebook. In the USA, people have an average of 250 Facebook friends – meaning a lot of messages to read when they update their timeline.
It’s not hard to imagine that you might just have sent a few WhatsApp messages to your contact list, updated your status on Facebook, read a few tweets and responded to other ones, or downloaded a free report or e-book after subscribing to some famous blogger’s newsletter, and read few e-mails and online blog posts before you actually started reading this paragraph. True or…true?
Welcome to the age of Information Overload!
These days we are bombarded with all sorts of information from all corners.
This simply drags us to the compulsive reading of a lot of information on a daily basis continuously.
And certainly, it affects how we live and function.
How does this affect me? Well, observe people around you next time when you go to the park or gym or restaurant.
You’ll notice that a mobile phone has become an integral part of people’s lives. Now and then people feel this strange compulsion to pull out their device and start looking at their mobile screen.
Type any word into a search engine and there will be plenty of links for Google, YouTube, Quora, Wikipedia, blogs, and forums that throw tons of information on your screen for that subject.
The ocean of information only sinks you into a passive state of reading. You keep reading until you feel fatigue and get really tired.
Your information processing capacity simply declines, and it becomes difficult to arrive at any conclusion or to make any decision.
In fact, you have no time to put your learning into action to see any concrete result. Rather than adding value to your time investment, it only wastes your many precious hours.
Effects of Information Overload
Here are some ways in which the overload of information affects the quality of our life.
1. Decreased Attention Span
The technology giant Microsoft has conducted a consumer research to find out the human brain’s average attention span.
They discovered that our attention span is now decreased from 12 seconds (in 2000) to 8 seconds (in 2013), which is even less than a Goldfish. A Goldfish has its 9 seconds.
Herbert Simon has rightly said that “A wealth of information creates poverty of attention.”
Alright, you might be thinking how does this matter to me? Well, think for a moment, what can happen to your resume that you sent out for your dream job when the recruiter has thousands of resume to scan through!
You only have less than 8 seconds to make it or break it.
2. Being a Victim of Analysis Paralysis
If you’re diving into an ocean of information with a view to acquiring more knowledge on a specific subject, you simply will sink in and never surface.
There are so many different views, options, and explanations found on any given subject that it will cause researchitis in your brain.
You will be tempted to dig deeper. This only takes up more time than required from your busy day. Too many options simply weaken your commitment to move forward.
3. Poor Decision-Making
An overloaded brain is prone to make wrong choices just to regret them later.
The problem we face now is that we simply have to make a lot of decisions because we have a lot of choices to select from for any given problem. This is truly exhausting and leads us to decision fatigue after some time.
Decision fatigue affects judges, graders, and anyone whose job involves continuous judgement
4. Information Obesity
Today for every single question whether it be related to health, wealth, relationship or as simple as the question of how to make an Indian curry…you simply ask Google Guru and Dr. YouTube.
Note that not all the information posted on the internet is from authentic sources. They contribute to your enhancement, enlightenment, and confusion equally.
To avoid a fat brain, we have to choose the diet we select for our brain mindfully; otherwise, we will just consume lots of extra empty calories at the Fast Food restaurant called the Internet.
The way we choose our diet mindfully to avoid obesity, we must practice mindfulnesswhen it comes to consume information.
5. Health Issues
“Plugged in” compulsion and the urge of “staying in touch” has given birth to many health issues such as stress, hurry sickness, strained eyes, fatigue, and also now tech neck (result of constantly bending our neck to look into our mobile screen.)
Obviously, our physical movement has been reduced drastically resulting in sudden weight gain and related diseases.
6. Development of Wrong and Damaging Belief System
I am sure you must have read this sales page where the title reads: Find Your Passion, Work From Home, or Ditch Your job and Travel Anywhere You Want.
Many so called successful bloggers employ their impressive copywriting skills to write a sales page or a blog post to promote their information products.
This mass information movement is so delusive that it persuades you to buy into wrong notions regarding success. No wonder it results in confusion, failure, and frustration.
There is no short cut to success and no substitution for hard work.
How to Overcome and Manage Information Overload
How about you? How do you stay focused, make right decisions, and live a balanced and productive life while dealing with the information overload in your day to day life?......
Source Soure and more read at:http://www.aha-now.com/information-overload-management/