How to defeat information overload by teaching.

Everyone is under pressure these days to improve themselves constantly.

Read industry news, attend events. Network. Watch TED talks while high-fiving yourself. Be more innovative, more creative, more focused, more everything. More of more is more! But in overloading on the input of all of this content, are we actually digesting more..? You probably know the answer. It’s actually no, if you weren’t sure.

Sprinkle some WhatsApp on top

Our brains are bombarded each minute with notifications from social media, work emails and news apps. Sprinkle some WhatsApp on top! Our train of thought is being constantly interrupted. That means our brains have very little down time to synthesise all this data into coherent, usable knowledge. Memory consolidation is how the brain combines thoughts together to form stable memories. Memories are your knowledge. Think about it. If you can’t remember it, what use is an idea? You can only pursue new ideas, or apply new techniques if you remember them in the first place!

Preach the good werd

I was recently reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the classic business books, which had a great little snippet on how readers of the book should be using the book itself. It was simply to tell someone about every new thing you found interesting no later than 48 hours after reading about it. Everyone does this occasionally, but only selectively, usually when they are confident the listener really is interested. We all have diverse interests, whether personal of professional. We may be more inclined to discuss professional topics casually, while holding on to personal ideas. And then forgetting them! That’s on you, buddy!

Go forth and make disciples

The beauty of this approach is that once you realise you need to tell someone about it, you are more motivated to structure that idea in your brain. Cause you’ll have to explain it to someone! Not surprisingly, this is also why I enjoy posting on LinkedIn. It makes me really think through an idea.

Let’s try something fun. Stop reading now, and go talk to someone immediately about what you just read. Yes your spouse. Peter from accounting works. Or the random guy next to you in the coffee shop. Yeah that guy. Learn about learning by teaching, by teaching what you learned.

Uhh. See you later!

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First published on LinkedIn by Aki Ranin, Commercial Director, Tigerspike