Dealing With Information Overload - When you have had too much to think.

[L50LasPak]

This is gonna be a changeup from the usual discussions on race or who's gonna win the election or bullshit like sex and gender and all of that other nonsense, because I feel like this is a really fundamental problem facing the population, my generation, and hell, perhaps even the entire human race eventually.

I was watching videos on my phone and suddenly it all hit me at once. I enjoy many things in life that used to be considered luxuries. Fine art (as in paintings and shit), music, books both fiction and non-fiction, videogames too. I don't fully understand things like math and chemistry and atomics, but I know enough about them to talk about them at least alittle. Even in this world if you aren't rich all of that stuff is there so long as you have the internet at your fingertips. Which if you have even the slightest competent life, you do. And still further on there are articles and comments and forum posts just like this one to read. I've consumed this stuff all of my life, but I suffered a very strange feeling recently. I felt like it was all too much; even though I'm not as well-read as I should be, I haven't seen all the movies I want to, I haven't mastered all the games I want to try, I haven't flown around to see the art pieces that look so good in the pictures.

They say dementia is just information overload, but is that really it? Is there just a hard limit to the human brain and you're stuck? This is a big deal because now we all live in a world where you can consume tons of content with zero effort. Project Gutenberg offers you classics for free. Youtube needs no explanation, and that in itself is a mirror box of reaction videos if you're into that kind of thing. Movies are easy to acquire. Music is, well, all over the place. Do you want strong information on a real subject? Pick up a book, or even more, look it up. They'll tell you everything you want to know. Fine Art is a little harder because you're supposed to go there in person but fuck it we've still got pictures if you're curious.

So how the fuck do you all handle this? It feels like insanity. Give me some ideas, because my head is starting to hurt.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

I take a shower in times like these. I know it sounds cliche but it really helps me clear my mind.

 

[break these cuffs]

Go outside and take a walk. Find something in nature to enjoy. Don't listen to a podcast when you go on a hike. Don't take a dozen selfies at the summit. Go outside and enjoy being outside. Humans have been living in and with nature for their entire existence. It's in our bones. Denying ourselves this pleasure is new.

 

[Slappy McGherkin]

Know what I do?

I turn the On/Off switch to the Off position on all of it. Then, take a couple of whiffs of my homegrown, watch the sunset from the patio and suddenly the world isn't so stressful or delusional.

 

[Just a fag]

I've felt very similarly and I found that reducing time spent on the internet helps immensely. or rather, the bad and negative aspects of the internet: social media, attention sinkholes like YouTube, bad news outlets, etc. there is just SO much out there that it all starts feeling overwhelming when you try and patch things into your own perspective, and downright impossible at times, that it inevitably becomes maddening.

I've found that devoting time into passions instead of wasting it on the internet is the greatest feeling in the world. I know it's cliche to say, but devoting time and effort into your passion opens up so much more to life than the cursory surface level shit you can only see on the internet. the internet is very bountiful, yet in my experience ultimately unfulfilling.

basically, limit your time on the internet for things that are necessary, and put time otherwise wasted looking up random crap into things that matter to you.

 

[DecimatedFerret]

Night walks. Maybe sit on a bench in a random part of town and admire the surroundings. Stuff like that. As long as it involves turning off the interwebz.

 

[Oban Lazcano Kamz]

@L50LasPak stop having a mid life crisis and deal with shit. maybe take up a hobby that requires actual effort like wood working

 

[Slappy McGherkin]

Or

@L50LasPak stop having a mid life crisis and deal with shit. maybe take up a hobby that requires actual effort like wood working

Or gardening. My ability to green keeps me sane. I grow stuffs. All kind of stuffs.

Nothing gives me more genuine satisfaction with life. And I ain't a vegan, I'm earthly in the old ways of making my own sausage, fermenting my own kraut and pickles, herbs and peppers. The world as we know it could Corona Chan into oblivion tomorrow, But we (as a family) would survive. And eat quite well!

 

[L50LasPak]

As long as it involves turning off the interwebz.

That's the thing though, if I shut off the internet, I've still got my books to read. And hard copies of games, DVDs, a library of vertiable content. I obviously can't just push a button and bring it up to my face like on a computer screen, but its all still there. That stuff doesn't just vanish when you switch the computer off. I guess not being a hard media nerd actually has its advantages in the end after all.

 

[verissimus]

Well, the answer to your question is simple : blow it all up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MduM0SCXlqM

 

[Silver Chariot]

I take from the Internet what I want, shut it off, and work with the information that I have when I am absolutely over the web. (cooking, movies, etc.)

at the end of the day, the Internet is a tool, use it wisely, don't let it use you

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I mean this in a completely different way than it's usually meant but: lol, calm down.

 

[HumanHive]

Join a cult. You'll stop thinking in no time.

 

[Cool kitties club]

Become a retard

 

[Lemmingwise]

A mind needs a book like a sword needs a whetstone. To keep it sharp.

A mind also needs rest from time to time, and with tv, radio and especially computers, our minds rarely get a break from processing.

I find that it's most uncomfortable to have no input of brain candy if it hasn't had a break in a while. The uncomfortable feeling of nothing when you take a pause is a sign that you don't have enough pauses. Some people interpret that break as the opposite and the result is that they don't take a rest and then your brain kinda goes on overload after a while.

OP just seems to be about noticing the signal of that overload and is unsure what to do about it. Much like a thirsty man in a desert it seems very urgent and important to do something about it. There isn't really anything particularly deep or thoughtful about it if one already knows that. Learn to take breaks. Take a shower, Take a walk. Pray. Meditate. Give your brain a break from time to time, particularly when it gives you that overload signal (although it's a sign you should have done so earlier).

The one thing that goes beyond that not quite shallow and not quite deep thought, is the ambition to learn and the question: What to learn?

Is it better to be a jack of all trades or master of one? How is time best spent? I find that re-assessing importance of things is easiest during moments of respite, when you can look at things from a distance. I think there's a reason you have these biblical tales of a guy fucking off to a mountain and coming back with rules on stone tablets, or scottish monks inventing insurance, or russian sages living in cabins. You need distance from it all to re-assess the right order of things and it's a continual process. The better you learn to prioritize, the more useful things you're learning, the more you're challenged to learn things you weren't learning before and the better perspective you have to better prioritize in the future.

 

[Dr. Troon]

Do whatever the voices in my head tell me to do.

 

[Masta]

Here’s some rambling about our media:
because the way the media is starting to become we have started to be unable to process information at a long period of time. (Short attention span) or to keep focused on a subject without becoming distracted. With information so easy to obtain and it’s just everywhere, we flip through subjects so quickly that’s why something like tic tok, youtube, and vine are doing more harm than good. It’s like we aren’t experts at anything and just know little bits and pieces of information.

Just from personal experience, it’s like when someone is at the movies, classroom, speech, or any event people must glance at their phone, why? Is whatever on your phone that important to distract you from this moment?

In conclusion at the base of it, it is an addiction.

Spoiler

Not going to lie, it’s pretty ironic. I have this problem and self reflection but it’s so god damn hard to break from it.

 

[queerape]

I lead a lifestyle that's very information dependent, but it's easy to get too much and fall too analysis paralysis. Unplugging helps my productivity and decisiveness too.