Information Overload? Overcome It with Minimalist Journaling

Have you ever found yourself doing research or trying to learn about something and feeling overwhelmed with the amount of information and contradicting opinions you find on the subject?

Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created in the world. To give you a better idea, 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the past two years. We are talking about social media sites, digital bank transactions, videos and pictures and texts, your own personal data that gets stored in online shops, and so much more.

And this is just the digital world. Think about how many billboards you see on your way to work, how many products you have to ignore on the supermarket shelves during your weekly shopping, and how many objects and faces and pieces of news your brain processes every single day of your life.

I know, I know — why would you care about all that information? You can just ignore most of it and get on with what really matters.

But that’s not really how it works.

Making decisions takes up energy, as does ignoring information. So every time you ignore a commercial or an unhealthy snack at the shop, you are spending energy. According to neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin:

“When trying to concentrate on a…