“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.” - Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish Philosopher You wake up, thanks to the alarm clock radio, which gives you the weather report, along with news about Paris Hilton’s latest embarrassing moment. You show up for work and sit in a meeting with an agenda as long as the Great Wall of China. Sadly, the Great Wall is more fascinating.
You then proceed to your workstation to find a few hundred emails, all from your colleagues, where you are CC’ed for every message - even if it has nothing to do with you. During a break, you head to the water cooler and the same colleagues pull you into a conversation about the latest office gossip. You head back to your workstation and pretend to work, when you’re really reading RSS feeds from all 300 blogs you’ve subscribed to.
At night, you come home and watch the news. The man on the screen is talking, and you manage to catch the headlines crawling on the bottom bar. Not only that, you go online and post your comments on CNN.com (or the website of the program you’re watching) and voice your opinion. You watch supplemental videos on YouTube - to make sure you don’t miss anything. And, before you sleep, you take another peek at your email inbox. 50 new messages.
Sound familiar?
If you keep up that lifestyle, you’ll soon be roadkill on the information superhighway.
Why?
Because information intake = attention. And honestly, most information isn’t worth your attention.
Notice that for each thing you pay attention to, you’re forced into an action, no matter how small. Whether it’s the simple act of listening or taking on an irrelevant task - you do something about the information you receive. You file it, delete it, or do something about it - even mentally.
You need to define what’s essential. What do you need to know? When do you need to know it? Where can you find this information? When you determine what’s important and clear out the clutter, you’ll notice that you’re less “busy” throughout the day. Less information means fewer things to pay attention to and less things to do. In other words, less stress.
I’ve already talked about reducing one’s email, but here are other information materials you can cut back on:
- Parts of the newspaper/news website that are uninteresting to you. For example, if you’re not into sports, don’t read the sports section. Scan the headlines and read only the news items that you need.
- RSS feeds/ websites to visit. Determine the top 2 websites of each niche or subject you’re interested in and subscribe only to those. If you have too many subscriptions, you’ll notice that most topics are covered by several blogs. You’ll be reading the same information more than once.
- Random everyday gossip (including celebrities). Are you that uninteresting that you take some time out of your day just to hear about who slept with who (or what) and who owns the new Jaguar in the parking lot? Why not spend some time on your personal goals instead. After all, when you’re not looking, they’re probably gossiping about you too. Besides, gossip leads to trouble.
- Random web surfing. It’s fun to do it once in a while, but most people - myself included - tend to do it for at least an hour a day. I’m trying to cut back by remembering my eyestrain after hours of pointless web surfing.
When evaluating how much unnecessary information you receive each day, remember that it all boils down to your goals and priorities. If it has nothing to do with your goals, either drop it completely or take in less of it. So the key thing here is to define what’s essential to you.
Are you over-informed? What type of information is essential to you? Have you done anything to cut back on the information you receive?
译文:
警告: 太多信息覆盖量无益于你的健康
告诉我你所关心的事情,我就能告诉你你是谁-- 西班牙哲学家:何塞·奧特嘉·伊·加塞特
多亏了你的闹钟收音机,你醒过来.听到收音机里的天气预报,还有关于帕丽斯.希尔顿最新的丑闻. 你出现在办公室,坐进了会议室,拿着像长城一样长的日程表.你叹了口气感叹,长城真是越来越不可小觑了.
然后你坐到电脑前，开始收取来自同事的上百封邮件，即使它们与你无关，你还是把每份都抄送了一遍。休息的间隙，你走到饮水机前，你的同事们和你谈起了最新的办公室故事。你又坐回电脑前假装工作，其实你在看你订阅的由300个博客提供的简易供稿信息。
晚上你回家看新闻，屏幕上的男人在讲话，你捕捉到屏幕下方打出来的头条新闻。不仅如此，你上网在CNN上发表评论（或者在你所观看的节目的网站上表达想法）。你在YouTube上观看人们上传的视频，确保自己没有错过任何消息。然后，你睡觉之前，又检查了一遍邮箱，50封信邮件，又是一个高峰。
听起来似曾相识？
如果这就是你的生活方式，你迅速会在这样的信息高速公路上窒息。
为什么呢?
因为你接收的信息等于你的关注度。但说实话，多数的信息不值得你的关注。
请注意，你所关心的每件事都会迫使你有相对的反应，即使是很小的行为。也许只是简单的听或是进行一个不相关的动作，总之是与你接收到的信息相关的事情，或许是存档，或许是删除，或许别的什么事情，即使是精神上的活动。
你需要识别什么是必要的。你需要知道什么？什么时候你需要知道？在哪里可以找到这个信息？当你弄明白什么是重要的，理清了混乱之后，你会发现你的一天并没有那么“忙”。少一点信息意味着关注度降低，意味着做的事情减少。同样也意味着，压力减少了。
我已经谈过如何了减少你的邮件数量，但这里还有其它一些你需要减少的信息报纸或新闻网站上你不感兴趣的部分
比如，如果你对体育不感兴趣，就不要阅读有关体育的版面。浏览大标题，读你需要的新闻内容。
· 需要浏览的建议供稿信息/网站
在你感兴趣的领域找到两个最喜欢的网站，并且只订阅它们的信息。如果你订阅的太多，你会发现大多数的话题是这么几个网站所提供的，你将会不止一次读到相同的信息。
· 每日闲谈（包括名人在内）
你是否觉得每天都要去听谁和谁（什么）睡觉，停车场里谁又有了辆新的捷报这类消息很无趣？为什么不把这些时间用于你个人的目标上呢？毕竟，当你不注意的时候，他们也有可能会议论你。此外，讲是非会招惹麻烦。
· 无目的上网
虽然偶尔这样做还是蛮有乐趣的，但是大多数人（包括我在内）每天至少一小时耗在了这上面。常常在无目的的上网数小时后，我才因感到眼睛疲劳而打住。
当你在评估自己每天接收了多少不必要的信息之后，记住这些事情都会破坏你的目标和当务之急。如果它与你的目标没有关系，那就不要做它，或尽量少做一点。所以关键是弄明白什么对你来说是最重要的。
你是不是接收了过多的信息？什么类型的信息对你最重要？你又没有做些什么去减少你的信息覆盖量？