Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with informationoverload

Caution: Contents Under Pressure.

SNWidget — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:32:47 -0800

I'm being overloaded with information in my academic and digital lives - how do I separate the signal from the noise? There are two areas in which I'm completely overwhelmed at any given moment.

1) My academic work. I'm a teaching fellow who's working on his Master's thesis. I get great ideas for both my classroom teaching and my academic research. Over and over. I'll jot these down, and then they'll disappear forever. I'll go to a conference, and get a million great ideas - and then lose them all, or be so overwhelmed with something else that I never get the chance to implement them. I default back to standard, which drives me up the wall.

2) My digital life. I try to stay on the forefront be reading blogs on a bunch of different topics. I have various recipes stared in Google Reader, MeFi favorites that I've been meaning to go back and read for ages, and various things like this.

How do I process all this information, and distill it down to something useful? I get so excited and enthusiastic about new techniques, research, and news, but then I fall apart because I can't apply it to anything due to time constraints, or even a good system to process it all.

Thanks in advance, HiveMind.

Help Me Scale Back My Digital Life - Part 2 - (3 Years Later)

Gerard Sorme — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:01:04 -0800

Help Me Scale Back My Digital Life - Part 2 - (3 years later). Three years ago I asked how to scale back my digital life and got some great answers. But, three years is an eternity in tech time. I'm not so sure I'm any better with all this than I was way back then. Now we have Twitter, Facebook, Voicemail-to-text, text messaging, online storage, blogs, RSS, online this and online that. Has it all helped us become better organized? Or, has it made us become more deluged with choices to where we are more scatterbrained that ever? So, from 2006 to 2009, with all the new toys (for better or worse) - again - how would you help me scale back my digital life?

Dealing with RSS news feed information overload?

wastelands — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:00:33 -0800

Dealing with RSS news feed information overload? I'm using Google Reader to keep up with nine moderately high volume news feeds (mostly tech news) and two smaller ones (Daily WTF and a comic). This is the pruned-down version; I removed high volume feeds like HuffPo. I think each feed offers something that I don't want to give up, so I'm not sure pruning feeds is the answer.

It seems overwhelming sometimes, with easily 250 new items per day. It's almost paradoxical: I have so much news on my hands that I don't feel like tackling it, so I end up not getting any news!

Any longtime RSS news junkies have tips?

I'm stuck in beta

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:41:02 -0800

I have spent years reading self-help books, productivity blogs, self-help productivity blogs. I’ve found some treasured information and they have probably helped me in more ways than I’m conscious of, but… What now? I mean, how does one apply all this info? I get to the implementation stage, and I freeze because I can’t remember which question I need to ask to get an authentic answer, how to break it down into manageable steps, which bucket it should go into, which three steps I take to counter my negative thought, etc etc. And then I get distracted by a new Steve Pavlina entry on my RSS reader. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s very frustrating.

I’ve gone through several of those major life-changing events in the past 6 months or so: death of a parent (which, while unexpected and very, very sad, has been the catalyst for a rediscovery of appreciation in my life and is part of what’s pushing me to try to “live fully”), new job. Blah.

My motivation feels all shot to hell, and I feel like I’m just doing what I need to do to get by. I worry that life is passing me by. I know these major life-changing events are certainly having an impact there, but I just don’t know what to do, how to move forward without cheating myself out of healing time, knowing when to move forward.

And, I’ve started to wonder: what’s my goal anyway? What does the super-productive, creative, self-assured me look like? I feel like I’m being bombarded with different versions of the ideal every single day, and I don’t know what to choose.

Navigating the RSS backlog

grrarrgh00 — Wed, 02 May 2007 06:17:23 -0800

I need RSS backlog management advice. In my RSS reader (Google Reader) right now are 213 subscriptions with 3,852 unread items. I'm really hesitant to dump them all. I've prioritized them as diligently as my current categorization scheme will allow, but I'm definitely open to other schemes. Your advice? First, a little background on my process and what I get out of subscribing to RSS:

Broadly, my love for RSS is probably the same as everyone else's: I love having ubiquitous access to an everlasting, ever-fresh publication filled with text and images that touch on a range of subjects I find absorbing.

More specifically, I also scour feeds for: News about technology, including write-ups of tools that make my life easier. Off-the-beaten-path stuff happening on the Web to stoke my imagination for lectures and presentations with Web-savvy groups. Ideas to stoke my imagination for the work I do. Commentary on the news from a variety of perspectives.

Everytime I attack the pile, I find new gems, but I haven't had the drawn-out time it would require to get through the whole set of items. And at any rate, with my attention span, I think I'd just start glossing over all the good stuff if I set aside a day and promised to click through all the headlines.

I use Google Reader, generally on list view, and I'm good with the keyboard shortcuts. My one brainstorm so far is that I currently categorize my feeds by topic, and I may flirt with changing that. If I categorized them by priority/value, I could go through the best folders first, and dump items from the lesser folders if the load became too much.

Your thoughts are welcome!!

Help Me Scale Back My Digital Life

Gerard Sorme — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 13:54:24 -0800

Help! Lately, I have found that technology has truly become a burden rather than something that is fun and productive for me. I have multiple email addresses, domains, Flickr accounts, del.icio.us accounts, Bloglines, on and on and on. It has got to where I am so deluged with information that I have found my mind going to mush. It's almost scary......no, scratch that....it IS scary. However, I think the above may be the reason. Good old, "information overload." I know that sounds so cliché - but it's all too real for me. Can MeFites help and offer ideas to scale back and maybe offer ideas for doing as much as I possibly can through the interface of ONE SITE? I'm slowly going crazy trying to "keep up," proving, for me at least, that less is probably going to be more. Thanks in advance.

How to deal with information/art/life overload?

keijo — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:38:10 -0800

I often feel that there are tons of books interesting books I want to/need to read, exhibitions to see, websites to visit, movies to watch, news items to research etc. just to keep in touch with the world and not enough time whilst handling everyday life. How do you deal with this feeling or the problem in general without panicking about it? It may be that I am just using my time unwisely I guess, but I feel that I need to exercise, to talk to all my friends, and I want to concentrate on all the things I mentioned above - and still I am expected to work, shop, commute and sleep? What am I doing wrong if I feel that there are just not enough hours in a week?

Origin of the term, and idea of, 'information overload'?

carter — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 08:11:13 -0800

Miguel's Spoilt for choice thread led me to wonder how/when/why the term 'information overload' originated. Have we always thought that we have too much information to deal with? [More, ironically, inside] It seems like it's always a current concern, but also that it has always been with us (OED gives 1962 as the first use of the term). However I'm sure it must existed before that, just under a different name; late fifteenth century scholars with six printed books on their shelves; ancient Egyptians overloaded with hieroglyphs and drowning in scrolls; Neanderthals pondering the latest models in stone axes. You could probably confuse a chimp by presenting it with a pile of bananas and a pile of mangoes.