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Information overload: you’re at fault, not technology

By | November 30, 2011, 7:00 AM PST

If you feel overloaded by the wealth of information in the digital age, tough: it’s your own fault.

That’s according to The Information Diet author Clay Johnson, who says in an interview with O’Reilly’s Mac Slocum that “information overload” ought to be renamed, and reframed, as “information overconsumption.”

Johnson says:

We never say someone suffering from obesity is suffering from food overload. Bad food is manufactured by companies that are being run by people, being distributed by companies that are run by people, and being purchased with money from people. Spend a night in a room with a bucket of fried chicken, and provided you don’t eat it, your cholesterol is unlikely to change.

In the interview, he offers five steps to sanity. Among them: figure out what and how much you’re actually consuming, cut down on the number of things vying for your attention and cut out anything that requires management over time. Fight overload — er, overconsumption — by removing your susceptibility to it.

Otherwise, you’re at risk of a poor sense of time, shortened attention spans, shallower relationships, stress and hypertension. (In other words, all the traits of a highly successful SmartPlanet editor.) Your brain is on overdrive for too long during the day — instead of working to manage it, work to mitigate it.

Don’t blame the information for your bad habits [O'Reilly Radar]

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Andrew Nusca

About Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca is editor of SmartPlanet.

Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca

Editor

Andrew Nusca is editor of SmartPlanet and an associate editor for ZDNet. Previously, he worked at Money, Men's Vogue and Popular Mechanics magazines. He holds degrees from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and New York University. He based in New York but resides in Philadelphia.

Follow him on Twitter.

Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca
Andrew Nusca does not hold any investments in the companies he covers.
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This might apply to someone who is overloaded as a casual user
But for those in the work field, it could be a different story. With today's economy, there a many layoffs and departments being eliminated. In a lot of cases, that does not mean the dismissed person's job does not have to be done.

That's right, people are being given more and more to do in a work place. There is a lot of stress related employees now that are doing what 3 or more people used to do. While there are ways to reduce stress, stopping activities is not one of them.
Posted by DadsPad
Updated - 2nd Dec
0 Votes
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Agree to certain extent
While the first part of it's only partly true the first comment is also true. We as a general user like information what kind of info that's up to the user, but as society and economy changes not always for the better we are force with more and more information whether we like it or not. Yes there are some steps we can do to make things easier, but a lot of it we have no choice. Like as said earlier doing somebody else s job because of lay offs or what ever reason.
Signed Just an opinion
Posted by bookkeeper@...
2nd Dec
0 Votes
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In my opinion
This is all very true, and young parents are forcing this upon their children as well. They are subjecting them to a video blur of images when children are allowed to watch tv and videos. More and more video is shot like a coke commercial ad today. No long takes, everything has to blink back and forth. No wonder there is so much more autism and ADD these past couple of decades. Tell the TV Ad Council and/or Standards Organisation that scene lengths should be doubled on children's shows.
Posted by 16Tons
2nd Dec
+1 Vote
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Good article -- it's the truth, folks.
Humans are absolutely GREAT at deluding themselves, and the way they do that here, is by splitting their attention between tasks.

No, they are NOT doing several things "simultaneously." Rather, they are engaging in several different ongoing PROCESSES at once, stopping each one when it is "time" to do one more piece of the next one.

In computing, this is called "simulated multitasking," or simply "multitasking," and the process is the same: creating an ILLUSION of several simultaneous processes, by switching between them on the fly. Just remember the ILLUSION part of the definition, because that is what's happening.

This constant shuffling of the flying pieces of each process leads in time to dropping those pieces in the middle of your juggle. Get enough pieces in the air, and you start not noticing the dropped pieces, because FORGETTING ABOUT THEM has turned into a self-protective reaction. We humans can STILL maintain the relevant "I'm still doing everything." ILLUSION, even though we are in fact dropping the pieces.

The first time someone really, REALLY "burns out," they may see this. They may also see that they were shorting their attention to any one task, leaving it less well done than it could have been.

My take on simplifying: if you seriously want to do GREAT things, you must basically do those things one at a time -- or at least not multitask beyond the "normal," in the process.

Too much is too much.
Posted by Lightning Joe
3rd Dec
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