by Kaushik Guha

Created on: July 04, 2009

Why do we need to avoid information overload?

In a Sherlock Holmes novel 'A study in Scarlet', Holmes' secretary Dr. Watson mentions something about the Earth's revolution around the sun. As it turns out, Holmes is unaware that the earth moves around the sun, he still believes it's the other way round! When Watson is surprised at his ignorance, Holmes says that he doesn't bother himself with knowledge that doesn't serve his purpose - to solve crime. He cannot afford to burden his brain with unnecessary theory and he would do his best to forget what he just learnt.

In your own personal growth, have you ever faced a burden of information that was perhaps nice to know, but was not serving your purpose?

Let's take a look at how a theory gets formed.

A guru or teacher tries something a few times and gets a result.

And bingo, they have a new theory, a new model, a set of rules to achieve the result.

But hey, have you ever stopped to think that the results came before the theory and not vice-versa?

A man doesn't come up with a random theory, follow it to the word and get the result.

He tries a bunch of things, gets a result for his efforts and then forms a theory around it.

This means understanding theory is not going to get you results.

Getting a result will help you come up with a theory.

Let's take an example.

Let's say in the domain of freelance writing online, the theory is 'content is king'.

Very true.

But is this knowledge enough to produce quality content? Can you just know this and go create quality content? No, when you create quality content and see good traffic, you deduce quality is king.

The point here is to not depend too much on the theories to bring you the results.

Theories are good for intellectual understanding.

The correct way to evaluate information is to see if it is moving you towards action or taking you away from it.

So in the above example, if you are a god writer but a bad promoter, the theory is right for you, as it will prompt you to start writing with greater gusto because now you know that if you just write well, it will take care of it.

But if writing is not your primary skill, the above concept can actually screw you up, and cause you to start thinking in a loop.

After all content is king, and you cannot write quality content, so better wait until your skills become perfect before taking the first step.

Wrong.

Take the first step in whatever you are good, if you are a good marketer, get somebody else to do the writing and then use your promoting skills to build a better website.

The fundamental lesson in avoiding information overload is to evaluate the information using this one simple rule:

Is it moving you to action with the skills and constraints you already have, or is it forcing you to doubt and judge your abilities?

Follow this simple rule and you will not be overwhelmed by a flood of unnecessary information.

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