Zen and the Art of the Internet is an old guide for beginners written back in 1992. In the preface contains this pearl:
One warning is perhaps in order—-this territory we are entering can become a fantastic time-sink. Hours can slip by, people can come and go, and you’ll be locked into Cyberspace. Remember to do your work!
That really hits home, doesn’t it? More than fifteen years later we’re fully immersed in the information age and those prophetic words have never been truer. We are overloaded with information, so much so that it becomes distracting, harms our ability to select and digest knowledge that matters the most, and ends up killing our focus and productivity.
Humans are not multitasking machines, because there really wasn’t a strong evolutionary reason for us to be. We perform better when focusing on a single task, it’s hard-wired in our individual brains, and the context switching required to jump from one task to another is far too “expensive” for our minds to continually deal with.
The solution is to put yourself on an information diet. These are a few strategies that can really help to limit your daily information intake, simplify your life and get things done.
1. Limit recreational Internet surfing
Sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter can be fun, interesting, informative and even teach you many useful things, but they are time-sinks. If you aren’t careful, several hours of your personal time can end up being wasted, when perhaps you’d like to put them to better use. Decide what the amount of time is that you’d like to spend on such sites, and stick to it. One hour of your personal time is usually a generous compromise. Remember that you can use RescueTime or similar tools to keep track of how much time you spend browsing and using certain applications.
2. Syndication is your friend
There are information sources that truly matter to you and rightfully, that’s fair, we each have our favorite areas of interest. Rather than checking them regularly and getting lost in the Internet in the process, use a good RSS feed reader. It will make your life much easier, allow you to follow the type of content that you really need or want to read more closely, and prevent you from jumping from site to site in boredom. Read your feeds once or twice a day, and then get on with your life.
If you are using a Mac OS X I suggest the excellent NetNewsWire, while Windows users should take a look at FeedDemon. If you prefer to use your browser, as opposed to a standalone desktop application, Google Reader is definitely worth a try.
If you already use a feed reader, don’t forget to put it on a diet as well. Do you really have time to read hundreds of regularly updated feeds?
3. Don’t obsess over your email
Check your email inbox two (or three times maximum) during the day. Some people tend to frenetically hit “refresh” while waiting for new emails to show up or they check every email notification that appears in programs like Outlook, Lotus Notes or Thunderbird. Unless you work in customer service relations, disable pop up notifications, blip sounds, and only check your email every few hours. You can read Inbox Zen with the three folder email system to learn more about a good system I use to stay on top of emails without stressing over them.
4. Limit IM chats
Instant Messaging is a very immediate form of communication and it’s rapidly taking over the use of emails, even in the workplace. My suggestion is to limit its usage though, because you can easily end up wasting both yours and other people’s time. The easiest way to accomplish this is to put yourself in “Do not disturb” mode. If it’s truly an emergency, you’ll get contacted regardless of your status. But you’ll also avoid all those “So what’s up, Tony?” type of chats. Note that I’m not advocating getting rid of social interaction. On the contrary, I’m suggesting more social interaction when appropriate (in the form of taking to someone in person). Most people will agree though that being interrupted by IM messages when you are in the middle of working on something brain-intensive is a surefire way to lose focus.
5. Skip unnecessary meetings
There are meetings you don’t really need to participate in. So why are you still going? If your presence at a given meeting doesn’t benefit either yourself or your company, I’d argue that your time is much better spent on actual work. Of course, I’m not advocating that you stop attending meetings all of a sudden, that’s a good way to get fired. Rather I’m suggesting that you discuss with your manager about whether or not your participation in a meeting is required and of any actual advantage to the company. Meetings can be very useful, but let’s be frank, many of them aren’t.
6. Keep it short on the phone
Don’t chit-chat on the phone. Get to the point quickly and politely and always encourage the person on the other side to skip ahead to the real reason behind their call. If a follow up is required, try to see if this can be arranged by email instead.
7. Cut the number of hours in front of the TV
Try to limit the amount of time that you spend watching TV. If you read the news online, you don’t really need to view it again in the living room. I don’t dislike TV, there are a few interesting programs that I feel are really worth watching, but if you’re not careful, TV can become a big source of information overload and equate to time spent in a less than productive manner.
Some people watch 4 hours of TV a day. Is that too much? Too little? I like to think in terms of percentage of one’s over-all life. On average, we have 16 waking hours a day. If you consistently spend 4 hours watching TV every day, then TV ends up “wasting” a quarter of your adult life. Is it a waste? It depends, on your deathbed would you regret having spent a quarter of your life watching TV? I know I would.
Enjoy your free time
These 7 tips for reducing the information overload outlined above are a mix of things that can be applied to your personal and professional life. They’re not intend to be a guide for making you a productive, unstoppable machine. Productivity and focus at work are the main effects of these techniques, but there is more to them than that.
What would you do if you had 16 extra hours a week that could be obtained by eliminating unnecessary, time-sink types of activities? You could hang out more with the people you care about, take up a hobby, get a dog, go out more or work towards your goals. Regardless of how you choose to spend your newly obtained time, your life will likely be much better off because of it.
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