How to Overcome Information Overload

Living in current modern information era where social networking, globalization of information and abundance of knowledge taking the center stage of our lives , mainly via internet, also pose a danger of what so called “information overload”. “Information Overload” is a condition that you have too many information available for you about a particular subject so that you don’t know where to start or become confuse as some of the information may contradict each other.

The real danger of information overload is that you become procrastinated and end up doing nothing. This is quite ironic. You want to do something new about a subject. Of course you need to have some knowledge to start your new subject. But after you have too many of that knowledge you become paralyzed and still cannot do something about your new subject.

For example: you want to learn “how to invest in stock market”. Then you go research on the internet or library to gain some knowledge about investing in stock market. After reading various articles , books, reviews, forums, testimonials, etc you found out there are practically hundreds and hundreds of strategies how to invest in stock market. Not only that, you also found that “investing in stock market is risky”. But additionally, you also convince that “investing in stock market outperforms all other investment vehicle”. At this point you will see yourself in “information overload” situation where you don’t know what to do next despite the abundance of the information… And the chances are that you just do nothing.

How to Overcome Information Overload

1. Know your goal or objective.
   Set a tangible goal or objective preferably writing (put it on your agenda, diary or PDA). For example: you want to know “how to invest in stock market”, then you need to set your objective such as ‘to get $200 per month extra income’
2. Only get information from reliable sources.
   You need to be sure that the information is trustworthy and relevant. For example: you cannot seek information about investing in stock market from property investor. If you don’t know whether the information is good or not, trust your gut – but stick with it. Or find something else until you feel that it’s good enough for you.
3. Gather your information only up to you are able to take action for your goal/objective.
   Do not over learning. Although you still need to consider wide aspect of your new subject, just gather the information only enough for you to take any real action. For example: just choose 1 strategy among hundreds to invest in stock market then learn what it takes to do it, e.g: what type of account at what broker, how much is the minimum capital, what the maximum risk and maximum reward, what is the cost etc.
4. Take action.
   This is the most important thing: take the real action. For example: open that account and fund it, take the paper trading to practice and then place that real ‘buy order’ to your broker.
5. Only if more information needed, go back to no (3) otherwise just keep the action until you achieve your goal.

In other words…

Use the all the information “as you go”. I call it “task oriented”. So, you just try to complete a task and along that line you find only information relevant to that task. Of course you need to see the ‘big picture’ first, i.e: to have that goal set, know the risk and reward and believe that information you use is trustworthy.

With this way, not only you learn something new, but as soon as you know that new information, you actually have done it. Of course, the result could be good or bad, and some mistakes – small or big – can be made along the way. But that’s part of the learning and you will be much better off compare to the other person who just gather the information without doing anything at all, because knowledge is NOT power, action is!