“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” – Herbert Simon, Recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
I feel like in the past decade of my life the tables have quietly flipped on me. I went from consuming information to information consuming me. And while that’s a bad thing, the fact there is so much more information is actually a good thing. I just need to be more efficient and disciplined in how I process it.
One of the keys to doing that is changing my information consumption habits (which I’m gradually working on). In the past I simply let information come to me. The gate was wide open and any bit of information that happened upon me was easily consumed. And since it was all easily consumed there was no need or motivation for discriminating which information to consume and which to ignore. We can’t work like that anymore…not without our attention being indiscriminately and completely consumed along with it.
The good news, though, is that we have a greater choice than ever before on which information we consume. We just need to develop the discipline to be able to discern which information is worth our scarce time and ignore the rest. The main challenge for me is overcoming an addiction to information. I want all the information on a every subject. I want to know everything going on regarding a particular topic. I want every possible side of an issue. But this approach sets me up to be necessarily unsatisfied and with an attention deficit for the rest of my life. For it’s an impossible task for a limited being. And our unconscious pursuit of it sucks up much of the time we should be spending on more important, productive priorities in our lives.
We’ve become information gluttons. We lack the discipline to control our information appetite. We lack the humility of our limitations. And we lack the faith to know that God has already given us the ability and grace to accomplish everything today in order to live an extraordinary life.
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I smiled as I read your post because it seemed directed at me! I am guilty of letting information consume me. I find myself wanting to read more and more and more on lots of subjects. It has become a problem because it sucks up my time and my attention. It is a difficult balance and an exercise in discipline to get the information I need without letting it take over my day.
Great post. “I want all the information on a every subject. I want to know everything going on regarding a particular topic. I want every possible side of an issue.” This is exactly how I feel as well. When I first discovered RSS feeds I went crazy adding all kinds of blogs and websites, but then they started consuming a lot of my time and I didn’t have the discipline to not read things if I was interested in them.
Eventually I was able to cut out some blogs and websites and get my priorities in line, but I think it will be an ongoing battle to make sure that I’m consuming the information and that it’s not consuming me.
I was fascinated when I read an introduction by Marshall McLuhan to a book by Donald DeMarco, an old one from the seventies I think, called “Abortion in Perspective…” that first he was Catholic, and secondly saw abortion and the increasing impingement of technology (he coined the term “Global Village”) as related. I’ve always heard of him as a futurist and prophet of the internet, etc. But in this introduction he reveals his fears of the technological revolution the dehumanizing of us all as much as the value of interconnects.
Any useful suggestions for how you are changing your information consumption habits? I also find myself struggling to control information overload.
Tim – I’m working on a post I’ll have up in the next week or two that talks about just that. Hope it helps. Would love your feedback once you see it. Thanks for reading!
Hello Matt,
Just discovered you via Word on Fire, duly added you to my RSS feed, and laughed (ruefully) as I read your post – you’ve perfectly expressed my own struggle as well. I am also working on some solutions – and I look forward to hearing yours!
Linda – thanks so much for reading! I hope you’ll share your solutions, too, so we can all benefit. God bless you!
I’m not sure if by interrupting my day to read and comment to this post I am consuming or being consumed. I’m so confused…:*)
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I think it was my recent experience of going back to college (online), when I noticed I had to make a real effort to read the textbooks slowly and stay focused on the subject. My habits had changed since the last time I was in school – I was now ready for a new topic after reading only a few sentences, which I now attribute to the constant flow of information from the internet over the years. It’s nice to know that others feel the same way – that we want all the information we can get, but the problem with that is that we are limited in our abilities to take it all in, and are better off using our time for more realistic endeavours.
I’m looking forward to what you present in the next week or two as this very subject has weighed on my mind for awhile. At first it was bookmarking favorite news sites and blogs, then it was RSS feeds, and then the perfect storm of Facebook. I’ve managed to eliminate 85% of the bookmarked sites and the news feeds quickly followed, but I still go back and forth on whether or not to leave FB. For the past two Lents (and Advents) I have left FB and stopped visiting news sites. This went a long ways in showing me I could eliminate many of them as well as the RSS feeds and free my mind up to listen to that “still, small voice”. Now if I could just break my FB addiction, but then again THAT’S how I found this post to begin with. :)
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