Too much information!

Are you suffering from information overload? If so, here are some tools to help you find the time and space to be creative again...

Consider the following facts for a moment:

• We receive, on average, 63,000 words of new information a day, via television, radio, email, messages on social media, newspapers, magazines or online.
• Ninety percent of all the data in the world has been generated during the last two years (www. ScienceDaily.com).
• It’s estimated that around three quarters of our time is spent receiving information.
• BBC News reports that information amounting to the data equivalent of all the movies ever made will pass across the Internet every 3 minutes by 2016.
• The typical Internet user is exposed to more than 1,700 banner ads per month (www. Digiday.com). • We collectively send and receive more than 500 million Tweets a day which means about 5,700 Tweets a second, on average, though the highest ever was 143,100 Tweets per second.
 • In just a single minute on the web 216,000 photos are shared on Instagram, a total of £54,000 ($83,000) sales take place on Amazon, there are 1.8 million likes on Facebook and three days’ worth of video is uploaded to YouTube.

Add to that a constant soundtrack of background music in shops, cafes and waiting rooms and is it any wonder we sometimes feel swamped?

All this clutter of information is taking its toll, both on our productivity and health. A study at Temple University, Philadelphia, found that too much information leads people to make stupid mistakes and bad choices in their work life. It can also contribute to psychological conditions including stress, anxiety and insomnia. Psychologists have even coined a term for the problem – Information Fatigue Syndrome.

Switch off
For many ‘switching off’ at the end of a busy day means curling up in from of the TV, chatting with friends online, or listening to music on the iPod. Silence – lack of noise – can make us feel uneasy, uncomfortable, or even threatened.

Many social animals, including humans, interpret complete silence as a sign of impending danger. It’s been suggested that our tendency to hum to ourselves or switch on the radio as background noise when alone in the house is an evolutionary response to this.

Silence
On the other hand, silence, freely chosen, can be helpful – even spiritually uplifting. Silence plays a role in many of the world’s leading religions, including Sufism, Buddhism and some forms of Christianity. In the Quaker meetings I attend each Sunday, silence is an important part of worship and a time to allow the divine to speak in the heart and mind.

Quaker William Penn wrote: ‘True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body: nourishment and refreshment.’

Space between the notes
Just a few moments each day spent ‘switching off’ – freed from all the usual noisy interruptions of everyday life – can have a profound effect on our mental wellbeing, giving our minds and bodies a chance to slow down, take stock and recharge.

French composer Debussy once said: ‘Music is the space between the notes’. Too much noise makes our notes clang and clash together, discordantly. Take some time to create breathing space between the notes and you’ll find life becomes more beautiful and harmonious.

 A walk in the park, a relaxing bath, or time taken to sit somewhere still and listen to the sounds around you can all be beneficial. Try it and see!



Sources for this article:
http://www.infogineering.net/understanding-information-overload.htm https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2381188/Revealed-happens-just-ONE-minute-internet-216-000-photos-posted-278-000-Tweets-1-8m-Facebook-likes.html#ixzz4fRWAAKbV
The Princetown University research paper on Information Overload is online here: http://www.orsnz.org.nz/conf34/PDFs/Buchanan.pdf