The Information Tsunami Is Sucking You In. And You Don’t Even Know It. (Part 2)

The Information Tsunami is real, getting bigger, and is happening now. Not taking an action is not an option. It’s a must if we are to maintain any sanity in our lives.

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Any Given Sunday

18 min readAug 27, 2020

A very big Tsunami approaching an urban city shoreline — Credits — Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

This is the second part of the main article. If you have missed reading the first part, you can read that first and then come over here, since Part 1 sets the context for Part 2.

Consequences Of Being Caught In An Information Tsunami

Open the door of any 21st century home and you will find people staring at screens, computers, televisions, smartphones, or in deep conversations with their beloved Alexa. No wonder, Information overload is becoming one of the biggest irritations of modern family life.

Once at work, some of us sort through over a hundred emails daily, many of which are junk. Social media use at work is commonplace, contributing generously to information excess. And then when we get back home, the TV comes back on, and we read the remaining sections of the newspaper and our favorite magazines, not forgetting to check our news apps and social media — just in case we missed out on something during the day.

While at first glance, all of this might seem routine (with some individual variations), the big question is, how much of this information is useful to us? Unfortunately, a large portion of it is unsolicited information that is getting drilled into our heads at the behest of someone else.

It is well proven with scientific research studies that the stress of not being able to process information as fast as it arrives, combined with the personal and social expectation of answering every e-mail or message or responding to a notification — can deplete and demoralize you.

Basically, it empties you before your day ends, and it gets worse.

Gone in 60 Minutes

An eerily familiar, if rarely articulated consequence of Information Tsunami is the delay in decision making when you don’t know whether or when someone will answer an e-mail or your WhatsApp message. If you don’t hear back in a timely fashion, you’re left wondering: Was my message willfully ignored by the recipient because it ticked her off? or automatically diverted to her junk mail folder, or left for a later response? or is it simply languishing unnoticed because she’s swamped by other messages?
Another set of problems involves the constant interruptions you face, irrespective of the value or importance of the content. When you respond to an e-mail alert that pops up on your screen or to the vibration of your smartphone when you’re “poked” by a Facebook friend or a notification of a “Breaking News” from your News app, you do more than spend time reading the message. You also have to recover from the interruption and refocus your attention.
Dealing with the message that had prompted the alert represents only a portion of the time off-task. People often use that interruption also as an opportunity to read other unopened messages/notifications — or to engage in other unrelated activities as messaging a friend, checking the Twitter feed, posting a picture, scrolling through Facebook, or LinkedIn, or surfing the web.
They cycle through other open applications on their computers to check what they had been doing before they were interrupted. And in that process, getting further distracted as they move from one window to another, and finally reestablishing their state of mind once they arrive back at the same application they had abandoned nearly an hour earlier. Boom — 60 mins gone just like that in thin air.

Procrastination Becomes Easy

Certainly, some amount of good-quality information is required to make rational decisions and take action. It also aids in building self-confidence when you have the right information at hand.

But when the amount of information is far in excess of what the brain can handle, our decision-making capacity and memory power declines. We end up making bad decisions that support our own bias, or no decision at all — the latter laying the foundation for procrastination.

And that is why probably one of the most common causes of consuming ridiculous amounts of information is the need to procrastinate. By reading yet another article, we often feel that we are indeed working and that we’re doing something good — we are learning, which in result will make us a more complete and an educated person.

This is just self-deception. The truth is we are simply procrastinating. We don’t feel like doing what really needs to be done — the important stuff — so instead we find something else and convince ourselves that “that thing” is equally important. Which is just not true. So, don’t consume information just for the sake of it. It gets you nowhere.

Multitasking is a Delusion

People may think they can maneuver many different tasks equally well, but multitasking is a delusion. They are actually dividing their attention, cognitively lowering the quality of each task in the decision-making process.

Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline. The human brain is simultaneously overloaded and overstimulated. Multitasking to the point of brain fatigue mostly leads to a depleted state in which, after making lots of insignificant decisions, you can end up making truly bad decisions about something really important.

We seldom realize that for every bit of information that we receive, whether it is something we requested or not — we spend brain-processing power and energy. First, we need to analyze it, compare it with similar stored information in our memory bank, decide whether we need to act on it, and then decide whether we should ignore it, memorize it or pass it on to someone else. Each of these steps saps the brain’s energy.

All this places heavy demands on brain function, which becomes overwhelming and confusing. But, we continue to proudly boast — “No problem, I can juggle many things”. Really?

A frozen lake with a mountain in the background — Credits — Image by mollyroselee from Pixabay

An Information Tsunami Freezes You Over

Information overload stops you from taking action. That’s the biggest problem here.

The sole fact that there is more and more information published online every single day is not the actual problem. The problem starts when you start over-consuming (just like over-eating). When you see something interesting or someone shares something — you want to consume it. You even feel like you have to consume it. And that’s the real problem.

No matter what topic you are interested in, there are always millions of news articles and blogs published every single day. Not to mention all the forums, message boards, social news sites, and so on. The amount of content on the Internet these days is so big that it’s virtually impossible for us to digest it all. But we try anyway. We are creatures of our habits.

That’s when we feel overloaded. If you are not careful, one day you will find yourself reading the 9th blog post in a row (maybe this IS your 9th blog post of the day, in that case, you should stop reading) on some nice website because you feel that for some reason, “you need to know this.”

When you try to consume more and more information every day, you start to notice that even though you’ve been reading tons of articles, watching tons of videos, and listening to tons of podcasts, the amount of information that actually gets registered or saved in your brain is actually very minuscule and you forget it the very next day.

Try recollecting the exact details of the podcast that you heard last week, or the specifics of an interesting blog article, or a video that you saw on your Facebook wall, and you will mostly come up blank.

You therefore then convince yourself that you need to be on a constant lookout for new information if you want to be able to accomplish anything in your life, work, and/or passion. The final result is that you are consuming way too much information, and taking way too little action because you don’t have enough time for it.

A large chunk of the information that reaches our brain is of no use to us in our professional or personal life which means that we are wasting a lot of brain energy by trying to process it.

Information overload is the new plague. There’s no vaccine, there’s no cure. The only thing you have in your arsenal are some antidotes.

A Nurse character with a syringe in her hand — Credits — Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

My Antidotes To The Information Tsunami

I don’t watch News Channels. Have not watched a single news channel over the last 7–8 years. Absolutely banned it from my life. Even during this current Covid-19 situation, I have abstained from watching the news channels.
To stay updated on what’s happening around the world, I conduct all my reading on Medium and on some very informative and fantastic blogs written by sensible people (Shane Parrish and Mark Manson) who know what they are writing about and why they are writing. For business and finance news, I have paid subscriptions to a couple of leading online publications that produce relevant and superior quality content. It's worth spending that extra buck. I treat this as an Investment in my personal development.
I delete any video or image that is forwarded on my WhatsApp, except for the one’s that are sent to me by like-minded people (who are not particularly Information junkies), who I know to value their own time and in turn value my time as well. Over time, you do come to know who keeps sending you junk and who doesn’t. It then becomes easy for me to just delete anything that comes from those individuals who are known to send irrelevant images and videos. In these cases, I don’t use my brain capacity to think whether to watch, or ignore, or forward to someone who may find it useful, or keep it for later viewing. Trust me the “later” never happens. I take the easy way out — Delete it without bothering to check the image/video. (Disclaimer — I do forward some images to a few of my friends who I believe appreciate a little humor. Guilty as charged).
I don’t strive to be part of any unnecessary WhatsApp groups, including my family groups. I don’t suffer from the FOMO effect. Am part of literally 3 WhatsApp groups, out of which I run one group as an Admin. A few years back, there was this WhatsApp group that was created by someone who had all my family members from all over the world. It was a good initiative, but as it is known such good initiatives if not managed well, lead to creating an International Dump Yard; which means if someone woke up in the morning in India and shared a “Good Morning” message on the group, folks in the US who were just about getting ready to hit the bed or already few minutes into their slumber would get this image of “Good Morning with pretty roses”..! How sweet is that your entry into the dream world stalled within 5 mins after you have just crashed on your bed only to be greeted with a Good Morning message! Or someone who went for a late evening dinner in some part of the world and posted pictures of the food that they ate, only for someone waking up in the morning in another part of the world, to be greeted with that image of a greasy bugger. Seriously, do we really need to see folks ate last night?
I don’t take my phone to bed. Strictly, no checking any emails or messages while lying down in the bed. I have set up an auto switch off at 11 PM on my phone. The funny thing is after implementing this, sometimes I end up hitting the sack before 11 PM itself. It took a while to get used to this, I had anxiety pangs for a few weeks. Now it feels absolutely normal. By virtue of this, I wake up at 5 every morning. (Though I give myself a 10 mins snooze to get the lazy bones moving) fresh and without any information overload from the previous night. It then helps me to concentrate on my work in the early hours which for me is the most productive.
I don’t participate in Twitter wars or rant about any issues or provide my 2 cents to someone else’s Tweet. I am not a subject matter expert on practically most of the political or worldly issues. Twitter is fantastic if used properly (I frankly don’t know how to use it that well). It's great for creating a storm and getting people to protest for social injustices, or bring down governments, or for rallying people to join a common cause, such as the one that was created by Greta Thunberg to get political leaders and governments to take serious action on climate change. It does not work for Trump. It absolutely works for Elon Musk (well, he messed up once big time).
I don’t scroll, comment, clap or congratulate anyone for their Learning Certificates or their every single office achievement on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, just like FB, Instagram, Twitter sucks you into an endless void. From the time you start your scroll (or stroll) to the time you realize you need to get back to your work or task at hand, you have blown away good 20–30 mins. (My personal message to all LinkedIn Users who post their certificates — I do wish you my very best in your endeavors and achievements). I do “like” some posts which really impress me or which I feel are relevant in enhancing my knowledge.
I have Un-followed many of my friends/acquaintances from my Facebook feed. Yes, you can absolutely Un-follow your friends (without Un-friending them) to avoid seeing their irrelevant informative posts on your Facebook wall. It's like, would you invite people over to your house who are uncontrolled freaks who just love to suck away your time and brain, just because they have nothing else better to do with their own time? Why would you then allow them to exist on your Facebook wall?
On Social Media platforms, I resist the temptation to provide unsolicited opinions and discourses on topics that I don’t understand or can’t understand. Am not perfect, so sometimes I do put down a comment here and there. And am happy with this, as I know am doing this very consciously and keeping the larger plan in mind.
Lately, I have stopped reading the physical Newspaper that arrives at my doorstep every day (was never a big fan of Newspapers anyways). They publish what they want you to read. Most of the time it is either political propaganda or some frivolous news about some celebrity pet or how someone was scammed out of his money. And these days most of the news published is also highly negative. With the Covid-19 situation, media and news publications have found new ammunition in their arsenal. Remember — Negative news travels faster than positive news. I for one, don’t like to start my day reading negative news. I may catch up on some of it online during the course of the day. I rather start my day reading a book, or a nice blog, or actively seek out information that I want to get updated about. (Fun Fact — It is said that just a single newspaper of today contains as much information as was available during the entire lifetime of an average person living in the 17th century).
I have one News App on my smartphone — Flipboard. All notifications of this app have been disabled. I decide to read what I want to read and when I want to read.
All notifications on my phone have been switched off, except for WhatsApp (Group Notifications have been switched off) and SMS. It takes not more than 10 mins to set this up on your phone. Of all the tactics, if there is one thing that you feel like implementing— just do this. It does wonders on how you are able to control all the information that is thrown towards you. Learn to duck. It pays off.
I don’t keep Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram Apps on my phone. I do have accounts on these platforms and use it prudently to just connect with friends and post on Facebook once in a while. I do have LinkedIn on my phone which I check once a day. I like to keep myself updated with what’s happening around the corporate world and also post some of my thoughts and writings there.
Not picking up the phone for the first 60 minutes after I wake up. This one I started just a couple of days back (I read about this on a Medium blog a few days back). That means I don’t jump-start my brain after waking up. Think about this for a moment — would you jump start your car every time you wanted to start your car? You wouldn’t right? You would rather start your car with ease, and let it rev up a little bit, before pressing on the throttle. (Hell, if you press the throttle straight away on your car too, then you need some serious driving 101). By not “jump-starting” my brain, I allowed myself to ease into the morning routine without cluttering my head with notifications and messages from the previous night. On a lighter note, it also meant resisting the urge to take the smartphone to the bathroom. I was successful in avoiding an Information Tsunami in the morning hours and it really felt good at that time. And as my day progressed, I felt even better. I intend to continue this. After all, I get my Dopamine hit early in the morning just by doing nothing..!

A blackboard with the word Nothing written on it — Credits — Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Do The Antidotes Work?

That’s the million-dollar question. Does it work? or Does it just suck you back in? Well, I am able to create free time for myself. (Time is the rarest of rare commodities of this century and beyond).

With that free time available at my disposable — I work out, read books of my interest, spend time with my kids, read books to my kids, go out for family drives, listen to music, build on my hobbies, talk to my friends (and yeah I do pick up the phone and wish my friends on their birthdays & their wedding anniversaries. I know its old school, but it gives me my Dopamine hit).

Less irrelevant information in my head creates space to do more and better. I am passionate about writing, so it also helps me immensely to get a clear stream of thoughts on the tap.

And yes, I do watch TV (am not a recluse) — but just 3 things. Formula 1 Racing that takes place on alternate weekends, and a dose of Documentaries and Movies on Netflix on weekends. Sometimes I do steal in a movie or a re-run of a Formula 1 race during the weekday to provide a little bit of lubrication to my brain.

Let’s not forget that information per-se is not bad or unhealthy. It's a fantastic time in our lives to be able to access information and make ourselves aware of so many things and also entertain ourselves whenever we need it. I personally think we are the luckiest in the entire span of human civilization to have this power of information in our hands. The benefits are just endless.

The beauty of information is that, when it’s managed well, it creates opportunities and learnings that are beyond our imagination. The fact that we are even seriously working towards colonizing Mars, in just over a hundred years of the first flight by the Wright Brothers, is absolutely amazing. In no part of our entire existence, we have been able to achieve so much in 100 years.

So the secret juice to managing Information overload is — “Relevance”.

Create the right structure, focus on controlling your responses, make the right choices, chose to be different, and you will discover that you always had the ability to overcome the Information Tsunami all along. You just need to unleash your inner Karate Kid or the Ninja Warrior, whatever comes to you naturally. (Mine is the Ninja Warrior, I am smitten by the Nunchucks and the Ninja Stars)

5 cute looking Ninja characters holding Ninja accessories — Credits — Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Final Thoughts

Every two days we create as much information from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. And we are generating 5 Quintillion bytes of data every day. That’s 18 zeros after 5. This is how the Tsunami looks — 5,000,000,000,000,000,000.

What you chose to do with all that information, or whether you need it in the first place, or how you manage the flow, are important considerations in ensuring you don’t get sucked by this Information Tsunami. Because remember the Tsunami only gets bigger with time.

Information is on track to double every 70 days, with no signs of slowing down.

The antidotes to the Information Tsunami shared above are from my personal experiences of trial & error. I have captured the ones that are working for me. It does challenge you from time to time. But the only way you can rise above it, is by sticking to your plan and calling upon your inner warrior. Having said that, you don’t need to implement all to manage the Information overload.

Try a few and see what works for you. In that process, you may be able to figure out your own new tricks and tactics. For eg, a very good friend does not use Netflix, his explanation — it offers too many choices and creates an unnecessary overload. So he sticks to the simple cable television. Another friend uses a non-smartphone (the plain vanilla phones in which you have to squint to watch the small screen) when she steps out with her family.

Fundamentally, control the flow, and you stay in control of your day and your mind. The less clutter that you accumulate in your head (remember Junk In, Junk Out is for real), the better you will feel about yourself.

The key is to stick to whatever is working for you, and not sweat for things that do not work. Don’t worry about failure even before getting started. More often than not, we lose our sleep (and mind) on things that don’t work for us, rather than strengthening the tactics that actually work. Focus on what works.

Wake up your inner Karate Kid or the Ninja Warrior and you will be able to create more capacity in your brain to absorb and understand things that truly matter the most to you.

The Information Tsunami is only increasing every day, you absolutely have the choice on how you respond to it — either deploy your antidotes or get sucked in.

If you still feel any lack of motivation, just remember this one statement — even as more information is being served to us on a daily basis, our brain itself has not received any upgrade in thousands of years. Take a moment to think about it.

I would love to hear your thoughts/any antidotes that you are using to tackle the Information Tsunami in your life.

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I am also very passionate about F1, and run a publication — Formula One Forever where writers from across the globe contribute to this publication