Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#1

Post by coned88 » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

This may seem like a silly question but it's something that's been affecting me for a while now. With the sheer amount of information available in the world today I have simply become overwhelmed. My mind is in a constant racing state. It's calm but not calm if that makes sense. While I could very well be thinking about nothing or something specific like writing this message. My mind seems to have multiple levels. One of which is directed to what I am actively doing and one below it which seems to process information in a never ending manner. I am not actively thinking about these things but it's there. Articles and books to read, shows to watch, things to do in my personal life and at work. Career advancement. All of these things just never stop but I could be calm. I can sleep fine, they don't cause active anxiety. They just linger in the background. Shooting around saying me me.

It's getting exhausting. I like to be informed. I like to know what people are talking about and like to be able to have a point of view. I like to have an opinion and be able to argue it. But I have realized it's just getting to be too much.

Currently my instapaper account has some 800 articles I have yet to read. Kindle has about 10 books I want to read. pinboard account has about 100 unread articles most of which are small books.

Any advice on what I should do? Do I just purge them?

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#2

Post by wallflower » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:12 PM UTC

The sad reality is that even if you read a book a week or a book every few days, you would never be able to read the top X books. Life is about choices; you will have to choose.

You already know who you are. Focus on relationships and finding out about who people are.

An old adage: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Meditation will help you. If you don't already do it - volunteer your time and skills. Especially to teach those who might not be as confident as you.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#3

Post by jimfleming » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:25 PM UTC

Write it all down.

What do you need to do? What do you want to do? What things don't really matter to you?

Organize it on paper or whatever medium makes sense. I like OneNote and Trello. I've found its one of the easiest ways to remove those thoughts from the back of my mind is to put them someplace actionable and consistent. A stream of consciousness todo list isn't very productive.

With regards to instapaper or readability, either:

a) Treat it as a bookmarking service, not a read-later service. Then reference it when a topic comes of importance to what you wrote down above or you're just bored.

b) Clear out all 800 articles and start over, possibly being more selective or auto-clearing them monthly.

These are both things the brain does naturally, pruning through attention and focus and long-term storage for future reference :)

EDIT: Formatting

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#4

Post by david_shaw » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

jimfleming wrote: post #3

Write it all down. What do you need to do? What do you want to do? What things don't really matter to you? Organize it on paper or whatever medium makes sense. I like OneNote and Trello. I've found its one of the easiest ways to remove those thoughts from the back of my mind is to put them someplace actionable and consistent. A stream of consciousness todo list isn't very productive. With regards to instapaper or rea…

> consistent

I think jimfleming covered what I was going to say really well, but I wanted to really emphasize that for this to work, you need to be maniacally consistent with using the system.

I use Asana, and just keep a tab open next to my inbox. Sure, having a todo list helped from the start, but it took probably 2-3 months of consistently putting everything (and their anticipated due dates) into Asana before I could really trust the system. Now that it's ingrained into my workflow, though, I know that anything I need to keep track of is there.

Once you get to that stage, it's like a whole different life -- seriously.

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#5

Post by jhki » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

I really recommend meditation.

Other than that, you just need to accept that you'll never be able go through it all. And prioritize what's most important to your life. And sometimes just lay it all aside and recharge.

But meditation has really healped me with all of these. And in the end it's quite of a high-quality problem.

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#6

Post by thibaut_barrere » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

A lot of people get trapped into this these days.

You have no commitment to read these articles. They should serve you, not the other way round.

I would personally purge everything and stop using pinboard/instapaper for a while.

Try to unsubcribe to as many newsletters as you can as well, it definitely helps.

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#7

Post by sysk » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:48 PM UTC

Perhaps this could be of some inspiration? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudeism

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#8

Post by estrabd » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:54 PM UTC

You might be INTP. FInd out and if you are, find a community of them. It helped me.

And to put it succinctly, minimize your information firehoses and reject the notion that you need to keep abreast of everything even if it is not relevant to you.

Purge all of your reading lists and resist building them. If you keep any lists or bookmarks, require that they be things you HAVE read and want to keep as reference for later. I do have a "toread" bookmark folder, but I almost never go back to read things there.

Visit only one or two tech sites a day. For example, I come to HN to the exclusion of almost anything else because it does a good job of showing only relevant things. But I limit this to 3-5 times a week and only when I'm bored. It's a good filter.

Lastly, get a personal project that serves as a good source of challenges. Use it to help decide if you should read about a particular technical topic. You'll find that this serves as a good filter, but at the same time you'll magically seem to read about things relevant to your technical challenges in a surprisingly timely manner.

HTH,

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#9

Post by m52go » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:56 PM UTC

I bet you could be more informed and successful in your career by reading only a small portion of all the content you have picked out.

Anything vital you do miss on will come to you through the social network you could be building instead of reading through all this stuff.

Moreover, reading more won't give you a point of view. It'll only give you others' points of views. Only you can create your own point of view.

Re: Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

#10

Post by ponyous » Sat, Dec 06, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

I have no answer, but I found this really interesting, since we are one of the first generations with this problem. We are yet to determine the best way to solve this, which will probably be very interesting!