Hacking Information Overload

Using the Internet for self-improvement

In her post“Information Overload,” Anna Radchenko describes how information overload has driven her constant attempts to abandon the Internet. I don’t blame her. I used to have this problem as well.

Every day, I am flooded by the infinite streams of information from the social networks that I use (I lost count after Facebook and Twitter) and the news feeds that I subscribe to. My brain wants to learn about every new thing that happens in the world, even if that new thing possesses no utter relevance to my immediate life. It’s an addiction, a black hole that sucks away my productivity. And the Internet only serves to fuel this awful addiction.

I believe that the Internet being prevalent in today’s world is inevitable because it is built to provide ease of accessibility to information.The root of my addiction is the deep integration of the Internet into my life. It has successfully synced information overload into my daily routine.

My attempts to abandon the Internet have been futile. Even trying to not use a social network like Facebook for a week, let alone a day, has been extremely difficult. I feel disconcerted by the withdrawals that I experience from not knowing the latest and greatest. I feel disconnected from the world, trapped by the guilt of living inside my own bubble.

So if information overload drives me crazy, and information scarcity does so as well, what can I do? I have failed to cut myself away from the Internet and its flow of information because I could not handle the repercussions from doing so.

Instead, I took the effort to genuinely tailor the Internet content that I consume from the variety of online media sources that I use every day. I try my best to ensure that the content that I consume contributes to my intellectual growth and passions, keeps me updated with the most important people in my life, and challenges me to think creatively and progressively.

What I have realized is that I cannot pull the plug on the Internet. But what I can do is to increase my productivity while using the Internet and leverage my online activities to improve myself as an individual.