We are faced with a problem that was unthinkable until just the past few decades — we have too much information at our fingertips.
Really, it’s not the issue of what’s at our fingertips but how much is being thrust at us. As I shared with my “Facebook still isn’t listening to you” post, each of us sees between 5,000 – 10,000 ads every day. Couple that with social media posts, news articles, podcasts, emails, text messages, etc, and it’s a unfathomable number.
At times, companies seemingly use this to their advantage to help bury otherwise useful information. In his book “Homo Deus“, author Yuval Noah Harari puts it this way:
“In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. […] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.”
Learning what to ignore is very powerful. Control the inputs in your life. Learn to say no when it’s appropriate.
We can’t control everything in our path, but we can work to carve a path that is much quieter, and it’s often in our best interest to do just that.
