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Become a Blogger and Relax
A Systems Approach to Information Overload
By Michael C. Gilbert, October 2, 2008
As is often the case, as I prepare myself for next week's Less is More workshop, I find myself wanting to share one of the more provocative insights that I've had from coaching people through the challenge of information overload. This is the result.
If you want to tackle information overload, become a blogger.
I'm tempted to make this the shortest article I've ever written and just leave it at that, in order to be provocative. But since I won't get the benefit of your immediate reactions, I will have to forgo that little pleasure and actually explain myself.
The experience of "information overload" has many causes, among which are these three important ones: (1) We don't know what to do with the information we are getting. (2) We don't know how to filter and select amongst all that information. (3) We don't know how to influence the flows of information themselves.
Blogging addresses all three of these causes of the "information overload" experience.
Of course, most people to whom I make this suggestion have a negative reaction to it: "I already don't have time for all this information coming at me. How am I supposed to find time to blog on top of that? No way!"
This reaction is a classic symptom of the trap of local optimum. I'm sure you're familiar with this, if not explicitly by that name. In essence it describes the situation where you're trying to climb to a better place - in this case perhaps that would be greater equanimity or agency in relation to information - but you're stuck on top of a little hillock, it's downhill in every direction, and the nearby peaks are obscured by fog.
In other words, there is a reason why your experience of overload persists. The system dynamics in which you find yourself keep you stuck on top of that hill. There are many interesting elements to those dynamics - I have found that most people who are overwhelmed systematically keep themselves there - one of the most obvious of which is that it takes vision and effort to make the transition to a new point of stability.
I can't give you the effort, but I can offer you a vision. Here's what this looks like:
The operating principle here is this: Most of the inbound flow of information that we have to deal with is unclearly tied to our productive work. If we can shape a small element of our productive work so that it gives us the practice of rapidly discerning the value of various types of information, in a manner that is easily actionable, then we will quickly refine our sense of purpose in a way that improves our filters. By learning how to decide whether or not to blog about something and then what to say about it, we become ruthless in our culling of information and in our selection of sources.
It's not just any kind of blogging that will do this, of course. You can't decide to be a blogger of your best cat photos and hope to have it meaningfully affect your information flow at work, unless your jobs is somehow related to cats or perhaps photography. Your blogging must relate to your work in a meaningful way.
What you must be is a knowledge blogger.
A lot has been written about "knowledge management" and blogging, but my goal here is to keep this concept very simple. The idea is for your blogging to be an accurate reflection of the knowledge and learning dynamics of your work. That means that your audience is comprised of the people you are charged with empowering in your work and/or the communities of practice composed of people with whom you share similar professional problems and solutions. But blogging is not for them; it's for you. This is just the way in which you position your blogging within the context of your work, which is what will allow it to work its magic on your flow of information.
It may be counterintuitive - or at least anxiety provoking - to take on any sort of new commitment when you're dealing with the kind of stress caused by the experience of information overload. But a systems approach to this problem is the only sustainable solution. Unless, you're going to cut yourself off and go live in a cave (thereby allowing your natural environment to make your information choices for you), you need a system that allows you to develop rigorous judgment about what is valuable and what isn't.
Blogging is just such a system. Give it a try.
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