How to Reduce Information Gluttony to Free Your Unfocused Mind

Maddox
6 min readAug 11, 2021

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Photo by Nonsap Visuals on Unsplash

I noticed that some days I had trouble focusing at work. Other days, this didn’t seem to be a problem.

I discovered that on the days focusing was difficult, I was consuming more information than usual. Mostly, from my phone, that would buzz several times an hour.

This inability to focus, bled over into my hobbies too. I was unable to focus long enough to watch a web development tutorial, and I found myself with writer’s block. But, how could that be? Shouldn’t I have more information on hand to write with?

The problem was, I was an information glutton. Brain fog flooded my mind, and thinking became strenuous. Fortunately, I figured out a good method for focusing.

Information Gluttony

What is information gluttony? I define it as consuming too much information in a short time span. Think of switching between various social media’s, your email, and your text messages all within a few minutes.

What happens is that your mind acts as filter that is using its working memory to interpret all its recently consumed.

I learned while in psychology class, that your brain will sort through this information, discard what it finds useless, and store what may be of use later. This is a complicated process, but if you’d like a fun example just check this out.

So what you’re left with is a mind that can’t sort information as efficiently. This is what we consider distracted. You could also label this as having a foggy brain.

Part of the reason you are distracted is that you are also, “thinking quickly”.

Thinking quickly is the situation you encounter when your mind is racing between various bits of information at a break neck speed. This is because the information is still being filtered by your mind. Severe cases of “thinking quickly” can be diagnosed as ADHD or similar types of mental disorders.

I’m not a psychiatrist by any means, however, you will be able to enhance your focus by reducing your information gluttony.

Reducing information gluttony

The most important part of focusing better is reducing your intake of information. I’ll use my phone as an example.

Americans spend an average screen time of 5.4 hours on their mobile phones daily.

Last week I spent a grand total of 20h 3m on my phone. My average was 2h 51m per day.

I use my phone roughly 2 1/2 hours less than the average American. This is good, but could be better.

What matters, is that I’m consuming the correct information with my 3 hours of phone usage daily. Knowing what the correct information is can be difficult.

There is a simple way to know what the “right” information is.

The right information is the kind that is internalized rapidly when it is directly applied to an action.

For example, I’ve been building a custom website in Webflow for a few weeks now. Their website has a educational section called “Webflow University”.

Webflow University is an assortment of videos and courses that teach you how to design your website using their editor. I’ve been watching these videos and then directly doing what they say. Learning this way has been astonishingly quick paced. I already have a working homepage within the first few days.

Alternatively, I could have just watched some tutorials on website building, but not done anything with it. How do people know you’ve learned something when you haven’t produced anything? (Hint: they don’t)

The lesson here is, produce what you consume.

Or, as Yoda put it, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Choose 3 things to focus better

Now you have a good understanding of the information your looking for. Information that is mentally productive and not destructive. Information that produces.

The next step is to choose what you want to focus on. This can be difficult because there are so many things that can be done.

What I did to circumnavigate this problem is focus on 3 specific things within a specific time span. Then you can put everything else on hold.

I chose to dedicate my whole month of August to consuming information associated with these 3 things.

  1. Writing on Medium
  2. Learning how to develop a website
  3. and… my day job.

In reality, I only have 2 things I need to focus on. My job is more of an obligation. But, you can see that there’s not much to do. 3 things on a list that’s all you need.

However, each of these 3 things are associated with learning a new skill, producing something, or building a career.

Customize the time span as much as you like. Even if its just 1 day. But, you should never add more then 3 items. This will split your focus.

In the time you have allotted for these important tasks, focus on discovering all of the things needed to become productive in that area.

For my first task, I write drafts, flesh out posts, and then plan LinkedIn shout outs for the publishing date. I can finish this process in a few days when its all that’s on my to-do list.

Focusing on producing can’t get any easier when all you have is 3 things for the day. This brings me to my favorite way to learn and focus fast.

My Favorite Way to Learn and Focus Fast

In high school I loved to take notes.

I loved it some much that I followed online groups dedicated to the various pens, notebooks, and writing methods to produce beautiful notes.

I was proud of having the best handwriting and producing notes that everyone wanted pictures of after class.

But, this was all just unknown preparation for my online writing.

Writing online is the prime reason I focus and learn effortlessly. Here’s what it does…

  1. You have more ideas. When you are thinking about writing your next blog post, you are always on the lookout for interesting topics and extraordinary ideas.
  2. Your vocabulary expands rapidly. To communicate well you need the exact words to explain how your feeling and what you think. When you write, you are regularly on the lookout for new words to express yourself.
  3. You focus on singular topics rather than many all at once. When you are writing, its exactly the same process you take to solve a problem.
  4. Your audience depends on you. When you have an invisible force relying on you for content, you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable. Being disciplined by the invisible audience helps you focus. (That’s you right now!)
  5. You focus on specific content and take direct action writing about it! No more information gluttony.

Some of the best minds in history learned quickly through writing. Take Leonardo Da Vinci for example.

He wrote in several notebooks that ranged in topics from art, anatomy, and mechanical drawings. I think that writing was a huge part of his success.

Writing is a fantastic way to stay mentally sharp and most importantly, focus your busy mind.

A summary, for the not yet focused

Information gluttony is what causes our focus to split leaving us distracted.

To reduce information gluttony you must do 2 things:

  1. Produce with what information you consume
  2. Restrict what you consume

(side note: writing is my favorite way to learn and focus!)

Please yell at me if this wasn’t helpful

If this wasn’t helpful in any way, feel free to yell at me in the comments.

However, if you did find 1 nugget of knowledge to take home with you, I consider my job successfully done. Goodbye for now.

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Maddox
Maddox

Written by Maddox

I skipped college, now I write for fun and not for grades.

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