Earlier it was hard to access information. Your parents and grandparents did not have Google to help them with their assignments. They had to either go to the library or actually pay attention to their professors.
Information is so easily available to us today. We can learn anything under the sun using the internet. All of our questions can be answered with a simple google search. But is it all good?
Information Blackholes
We go on consuming endless amounts of information from various sources: Videos, Podcasts, Books, Blogs and not to mention our social media feeds. We turn into information junkies driven by FOMO, we think every piece of information that maybe remotely useful is fit for consumption.
Every app you use bombards you with notifications, enticing you to click.
Algorithms have gotten really good at gauging our interests. We can go on clicking one video after another on Youtube or scroll infinitely on Instagram.
More than 70% of what people watch on YouTube is determined by its recommendation algorithm.
Will we ever go on consuming endless amounts of food? We won't because our stomach has a way of letting us know it's full. Unfortunately, the brain cannot do the same. We were never built to consume such humongous amounts of information.
More noise than signal
There are no barriers to producing content today. Anyone can flip out their phone and make a tik-tok in under a minute. Any type of media can be produced in a matter of minutes and published to the world.
300 hours of video are uploaded onto Youtube every minute
We have so much to keep up with. We think we miss out if we don't watch that recommended video or read that news article. But much of the information that we consume is just noise. It is the information equivalent of junk food. The internet is more noise than signal. And if you are not deliberate about your consumption, your brain will be fried.
Confusion and Poor Decision Making
For every view point you have, there would be hundreds of opposing view points on the internet. There is an abundance of information on any given topic. Without the proper mental tools, we can get lost in the sea of information.
An obvious side-effect of this is poor decision making — to make any decision you require a minimum set of data points. If you have too little information, you will make a bad choice, if you have an optimum amount of information, you are equipped to make a good decision. The opposite is true as well, if you have too much information your chances of becoming confused and making a bad decision increases.
Too little information = bad decisions
Optimum level of information = Good choices
Too much information = bad decisions arising out of confusionHow to handle information overload?
Practice mindful information consumption. You don't need to bookmark every single article that you come across. You don't have to take every single online course that is remotely interesting to you.
Keep in mind why you are consuming a particular piece of information. Classify information as "Good to know" and "essential".
It's good to know a lot of things and become smarter, but be honest and ask yourself — "Am I simply moving to the next shiny object that I see?" If you are a designer, it makes sense to take a design related course or consume information related to your domain, but what's the point in reading about molecular biology simply because the algorithm suggested it to you and you were remotely interested?
Often we fall into this trap of believing what we are doing is useful. It is easy to realize you are being a piece of shit when you watch TV all day long. But it is very hard to realize you are wasting time by taking a course on Greek Mythology. By all means if you are interested in Greek Mythology go ahead, but the truth is most of couldn't give two shits about it, we have simply tricked ourselves into thinking, learning this information is going to be useful.
A good test would be to ask yourself - "If I had to pay $100 for this piece of information would I do it?" If the answer is no, you probably don't care much about knowing it.
Pick and choose high quality information sources to consume. Ask your friends and colleagues, they might have done the job of sifting through information and picking the right one. Follow domain experts who know what they are talking about, they usually share high quality resources.
We need to accept the fact that we will never be able to keep up with the ever increasing amount of information on the internet. In fact we don't need to. If we can grasp even a tiny fraction of all the information that we come across, we will be far smarter. There is no need for us to be a walking Wikipedia.