Close all browser tabs. Heck close all applications.
If you must read news, choose the most informative news sources and minimize number of open tabs. Be selective, but keeping the same sources makes you able to skip many duplicate stories from different places.
Go outside, be with closest family, pet your dog, do something new every day, preferably non-comp related.
I can't process the information that is coming at me
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#22I read somewhere that someone said (either about physics or CS): "There's 50 times as much going on as I can keep up with, and I only operate at 2% efficiency. So there's this factor of 2500 working against me, and every day I fall seven years further behind."
And that was professionally. That wasn't trying to keep up with the news, and your friends' every social media post.
So cut yourself some slack. Nobody can keep up with everything. You aren't broken, you aren't incompetent, you're just human, and humans have limited bandwidth. I think that's where the answer starts: Stop expecting that you can keep up. Stop thinking that it's reasonable that you can keep up. It's not a reasonable expectation; there's too much for that.
The next step, as others have said, is limiting what you try to keep up with. See, the news outfits make more money if they get you to consume more of their stuff. So does Facebook. There are very smart people trying very hard to make you want to consume their spew, for their benefit, regardless of whether it harms you or not. You have to deliberately defend yourself. Consciously choose how much you're going to take in, and of what. And then fight to maintain that, because they're going to tempt you to make an exception... and another... and a whole bunch more... and then your limits are gone. If and when that happens, recognize that it happened, remember why you put limits on, and go back to the limits.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#23That's why you have to pick your battles.
Look for the 20% of effort that will get you 80% of the results.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#24First off, do you still read the news? If so, consider cutting them completely. As for the rest, deal with issues in a sequential manner. Don't deal with multiple things at once. Be stubborn: pick one thing, kill it dead, move to another. And consider adopting a GTD-like system. If you deal with information, you will benefit from having a clear distinction between actionable information (tasks) and non-actionable inf…
I've struggled with this. News and social sites like Reddit are what tipped me off early this was going to be bad.
Yet I empathize greatly with OP. It takes massive energy and time to deal with the sifting.
I've started trying to develop mental filters and guidelines for things I went let myself dig into, like opinion pieces and their comments. It helps a little. I suspect I need to do more though but don't want to risk being out of the loop on major global and local happenings.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#25learn to skateboard and use your devices solely for content creation. fuck the world
This comment might come of as apathetic or dismissive or something, but I actually think there's a beautiful golden nugget of truth in what you just said.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#26Just don't punish yourself over it. There is more information than anyone could handle. It's really a matter of realizing failure is a part of life. You can not avoid failure, but you can sure handle it.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#27First off, do you still read the news? If so, consider cutting them completely. As for the rest, deal with issues in a sequential manner. Don't deal with multiple things at once. Be stubborn: pick one thing, kill it dead, move to another. And consider adopting a GTD-like system. If you deal with information, you will benefit from having a clear distinction between actionable information (tasks) and non-actionable inf…
I've struggled with this. News and social sites like Reddit are what tipped me off early this was going to be bad. Yet I empathize greatly with OP. It takes massive energy and time to deal with the sifting. I've started trying to develop mental filters and guidelines for things I went let myself dig into, like opinion pieces and their comments. It helps a little. I suspect I need to do more though but don't want to r…
I use skimfeed.com to attempt to get an overview of headlines in the world and delegate everything else to lists and work through them. Once an item is on a list, I no longer need the mental exertion to remember what I needed to do, and avoid getting into the "what was that thing I was meant to do and remember?" situation.
I also deliberately avoid WhatsApp and force people to email or SMS me. This massively reduced the amount of noise I had to deal with. Sure, I hear off fewer people but I actually get stuff done and if people can't be bothered to write an email, it's probably not important in the slightest.
This might not be an option for you but in any case it is reducing the amount of time you're on your phone and/or distracted, coupled with exerting a bit of control over when and how people can contact you. Your phone is for your convenience, not theirs.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#28News "every other day" seems to be a good approach these days.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#29>How can anyone cope?
by cutting unecessary information out. Instead of reading the news everyday subscribe to some high quality weekly newspaper like the economist, deinstall all the social media apps or reduce your usage to an amount of time that is more reasonable, and replace that activity with stuff that's healthy like working out, getting some sun, whatever.
There's no real mystery here, just remove the things that stress you out and replace them with habbits that are conducive to your well-being.
Re: I can't process the information that is coming at me
#30It's hard but eventually you can be content, knowing that it's impossible to process the fire hose of information flying around everyday.
What helps is not trying to read the news everyday. Go for a week without reading news, you'll feel much more in tune with your local surroundings and be able to focus on what you care about more.
Arron Swartz has a good article on this.