How Overloaded Are You?

Many business owners feel overwhelmed by all the things that need to be done for the business. One factor that doesn’t help this sense of overwhelm is information overload. Not to mention that all the information can get in the way of decision-making when you succumb to analysis paralysis as well.

Why there’s so much information overload

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, modern culture isn’t exactly designed for the way our brains work. The advent of computers and cable and streaming TV hasn’t helped this at all.

You might be old enough to remember that it wasn’t always this way. In the last century, people relied on newspapers, which came on dead trees, once or twice a day depending on whether they had morning and afternoon editions (and whether you had both those editions.) 

You might also have listened to the morning and/or evening news on TV, on whichever channel you preferred out of the three or five that you got through your TV antenna. The stations stopped broadcasting at midnight or so, picking back up in the early morning. There were no channels dedicated to news – you got it at whatever times of day the stations broadcast it.

If you wanted to look something up, you could go to the encyclopedia, though not all households had one. Or you could go to the library – most of them were open for longer hours than they are now. You’d go to the card catalog, which was a little cabinet filled with actual cards that had the book title and author and location in the stacks. Then you’d go to the place in the stacks and get it.

People have always considered knowing what was going on in the world the mark of an intelligent or at least educated person. But in the last century, the ways in which you got this information were already filtered for you. You could read two editions of your newspaper and watch morning and evening news, and still have hours to work and play. You also had a schedule for the times when you were going to watch the news, or decide when you would go to the library.

But with the advent of cable and specialized channels in the 1980s, suddenly there were 24 hours of content that needed to be filled. The channels all found ways to fill it, even bearing in mind the long-held news dictum of “If it bleeds, it leads.”

This was a lot more information than humans had ever received about people and places they didn’t know. (The printing press was invented about seven hundred years ago, and humans have been around for one or two hundred thousand years.)

But even so, the seismic shift didn’t occur until the 2000s. Before then, you pretty much had to be in front of your computer or TV to get the information. If you went for a walk or were playing with your kids away from screens, you could still separate yourself from all the information, even if just for a brief period. 

The iPhone came out in 2007 and the first Android in 2008. Now all of a sudden, if you were tethered to your phone (this didn’t happen right away either) then you were tethered to news platforms. Even if you didn’t watch the news or have a news channel on.

App developers pretty quickly got into the variable rewards game, the same as casinos. If you never give a rat food when it presses a lever, it’ll quickly learn to stop pressing the lever. But if you sometimes give it food when it presses the lever and sometimes not, it will keep pressing the lever, looking for that dopamine hit when it “wins” some food.

With phones, we humans are the same as rats. People pick up their phones regularly and sometimes we get that sweet hit of dopamine on the platforms. But of course every time you look at your phone, there’s some new information coming at you that you might not have asked for. Yet you get it anyway.

We still largely view those who “keep up with news” as more intelligent and/or educated. The problem is now there’s too much news to keep up with. American media is infamous around the world for almost exclusively focusing on American news, but you have access to international media too so you can check out what’s happening across the globe.

Why so much info gets in the way of improving productivity

The big problem with information overload is that it’s not knowledge. And what people, especially business owners need, is knowledge: information that helps them make good decisions. Most information that’s coming at you through the media (“social” or otherwise) is irrelevant. 

Some of it, especially from certain platforms (especially the former occupant of the Oval Office and convicted felon’s Truth Social and the platform formerly known as Twitter before a thin skinned billionaire got hold of it) spout information that is known to be completely false or at the very least misleading.

That means as a business owner not only do you have to filter out the things that are not relevant or helpful to you, but you also have to figure out sometimes if the information is even true. Back in the days of newspapers flush with advertising cash, big papers had big investigative teams, and they dug into what spokespeople and others were actually saying to see if it were true. Veteran anchors like Dan Rather were objective, and could be relied on for facts.

Doing all that filtering work, even if you’re good at it (you know where the facts are likely to be and you stay off your phone and so on) takes effort. It drains the resources from your prefrontal cortex, which is where planning, strategizing, number crunching, etc. And it doesn’t last all day – when your brain is fatigued enough from all this PFC activity, your brain relies more on emotional, fast processing. Which doesn’t lead to good decisions.

Things you can do to manage all the info and stay productive

Business owners are now responsible for setting boundaries around their own time and energy and attention. Before email and cellphones, when you went home at the end of the workday you were done with business, and everyone understood that.

Now, you have to be clear on when you will look at or accept emails and when you won’t. When you’re available for questions and when you’re not (both after work and during the day during your own focus work sessions.) You also need to gatekeep how often and when you’re going to allow info to infiltrate your defenses. That means you're going to have to stop being the rat in the experiment and choose the times when you look at your phone and/or read media, including “social”.

  • No interruptions from email or other notifications - best if you do this all day, but at the very very minimum turning them off for your deep work sessions. These sessions are scheduled (hopefully every day) and are “big rocks” that do NOT get preempted by anything else, including client meetings

  • Choose times to read email, which is another form of information – avoid reading them as they come into your inbox

  • Choose if you want to “watch” the news or get it from an online newspaper. I subscribe to The Washington Post because that was the paper where I grew up; the LA Times, which is my local paper, and Long Beach Post, which is my hyperlocal paper. But I am a bit of a news junkie so three is probably more than most people need.

  • At this point, I think you have to avoid getting news from “social” media. It’s always been a place where rumors get amplified and go viral whether they’re true or not. Twitter before its takeover would often get news before the major media got hold of it, but now it’s mostly just a rumor mill. Also, with the advent of AI images (which many people can’t distinguish from the real thing) and deep fakes (which are hard for everyone to distinguish), the likelihood that the info is wrong is too high. Wait for the fact checkers in the “lamestream” media. Tiktok is famous for hacks, but a lot of them turn out not to work or they’re dangerous.

  • For business info, go to people you know instead of relying on media. One benefit of networking is that you can meet those who are successful in what you do or something similar, and many who are successful are flattered by your interest. They may not have the time, but try taking them out for lunch or coffee if they’re local to you. I recently had an amazing experience with someone I asked for help on LinkedIn, whom I didn’t even know, and she was happy to take some time with me. You might also try someone who’s been successful and created an online class or course, especially if someone you know has recommended them.

Recap (tl;dr)

Info overload is a relatively new phenomenon that’s made it harder for business owners to acquire the knowledge they need to build their businesses. You’ll need to set up some boundaries and find trusted resources, but the knowledge you need is out there.

Want some knowledge on how to make those deep work sessions actually work for you so you can accomplish more in a short period of time? Just click here to schedule your free consultation.

Image by Justin Wilkens via Unsplash.

Previous
Previous

Time to Make a Difference

Next
Next

The Myth of Busy-phus