Are You Grappling with Information Overload?
Infinity is a strange concept. It’s something so immense that we can’t put a tangible value on it. So vast that you can only conceptualize it. Yet, you experience infinity every day — infinite amounts of thoughts, possibilities, and information.
There’s so much at your fingertips it’s easy to experience decision and information overload. Do you quit your day job to pursue building your own company? Should you leave your current relationship? Do you go out downtown or chill out to some Netflix? What do you grab for lunch today?
Some decisions are more impactful than others, sure. Still, they all chip away another piece of the sculpture you’re creating that is yourself. With each consecutive generation, feelings of being lost are becoming more prominent. Rather than focusing on religion, your family, and your day job like in much of the past, modern society has provided you the luxury of prioritizing yourself.
This is where these anxious feelings stem from. With an overload of resources, technology, and choices at your fingertips, it’s tough to point to exactly what you want. We have the same amount of time as others did in the past, but we have far more we want to accomplish within this time. There are so many different avenues to explore causing us to feel overwhelmed.
When unregulated, this superfluous information forces us into a state of decision paralysis, where we’d rather collapse on the couch and watch Netflix.
Even Netflix allows gives us thousands of viewing options at any time. Before you’d have a few favorite channels on cable.
Information Overload
Information access is one of the many bottomless pits of infinity. We have become cyborgs, dependent on our smartphones. Every day we consult them an average of 150 times to check the time, get directions, figure out where to eat, pay our bills, chat with friends, entertain ourselves, or just to Google something we’re unsure of. Life has never been so convenient. Yet, these modern-day gadgets that we rely on are also the root cause of several of society’s problems.
Over the past several decades, the amount of information you process has increased exponentially. Unfortunately, our senses have not evolved to handle this amount of input. The result? Feelings of anxiety from informational overload.
Consider my parents who had grown up in Soviet Poland. They’d wait in line for hours at a time when it was time to go pick up their food rations. As they waited in line there was one thing to do — engage with the people around them. It’s hard to experience information overload with such a singular focus. In contrast to modern times where waiting in line means busting out the double chin as you mindlessly scroll through social media or throw Pokéballs at imaginary creatures.
What do You Feed Your Mind?
You must be conscious of what we feed your minds. As the saying goes, the mind is like a sponge. Your mind molds to whatever stimuli you repeatedly provide it. If you are scrolling past hundreds of images, videos, and other social media posts each minute, your mind will mold to that behavior.
Your attention span will decrease. You’ll experience some degree of cognitive dissonance due to what you see online versus what you experience in real life. Plus, you’ll be wasting time. If you’re reading fear-mongering headlines absent-mindedly, I’d bet you’ll become more pessimistic and fearful of the world. Hopefully, you won’t end up in a tinfoil hat, hunched over in your basement hugging a semi-automatic AR15.
Staring into an infinite pit of information and possibilities is daunting. There’s far more information on your phone than you can ever hope to see and process in a lifetime. You must be selective when it comes to what information you choose to absorb and which actions you decide to process. The information faucet is overflowing our minds, and you must learn how to control the flow rate.
Social Media’s Impacts
Scroll through any social media platform and you’re immediately bombarded with snapshots of utopian lives. One friend is getting married, another building his business, a third has taken a gap year to explore the Earth. With so much information in your periphery, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. Feelings of insecurity bubble up as these glamorous snapshots become your base point of comparison for your life. Hell, even if you don’t want to get married, you live vicariously through them and begin second-guessing your own life path.
You fall back into infinity. As you fall, you try to grab hold of anything around us to have some sort of anchor. Unfortunately, the only way to have an anchor to paint a clear picture of what we want from life.
As you barrage your mind with other people’s lives, you begin to align your desires with theirs, rather than your own.
This influences your vision of what your life should be like. The result? Confusion over what’s worth pursuing and insecurity regarding your own path due to information overload.
It brings in static to your minds, which blurs the vision you had for yourself. We allow infinity to wipe out any clear path we may have.
Benefits of Infinity / Social Media
Despite my arguments, there is beauty in infinity. Infinite amounts of information and options allow you to grab the clay of life and mold it into anything you can imagine. The potential to connect, to create, and to become is greater than ever before.
Want to build a home from the ground up? Step-by-step information is floating around WikiHow online. Grab that hammer and get to work! You no longer have to track down the local carpenter and schmooze with him to teach you.
Want to get back in touch with an old friend? Shoot them a message on social media. No need to send a carrier pigeon wondering if made it to the recipient without getting eaten by a hawk. In fact, read receipts will tell you what you need to know immediately. Though I live in the United States, I keep my friendships from my Master’s program in Scotland flourishing. Social media allows me to keep in contact with people across over 20 different countries.
Define Yourself
How do you balance the overwhelming idea of infinity in the digital age with the benefits that infinity can provide to us? You must have an anchor. A clear definition of what we want out of life.
Related Article: How to Better Achieve Your GoalsIf you have your sights set on a defined goal, you become selective with what information and which opportunities to engage with. This results in the manifestation of the person you wish to be. Yet, if no direction is present, we grab hold of whatever is thrown our way as we drift through infinity. This has been true as long as humans have been alive, though more prevalent than ever in this digital age.
With all that said, don’t fear information overload. Don’t fear infinity. Life is finite. So, understand and appreciate the infinite opportunities around you; explore different directions in life, and pave your own path.
