Every day, there is more new information being added to the internet than I can possibly keep up with
One of my StrengthsFinder strengths is "Learner", which means I am in my sweet spot when I'm accumulating new knowledge and putting it into practice. I love to discover new things, learn more about what makes things work and grow in my understanding of how to make things better. The challenge is that there is always so much to learn and I know that one of the things that affects my state of mind more than just about anything else is the frantic feeling of not staying up to date.
As I've noted previously and will no doubt reference again, so much of the feeling of busyness that we experience is linked to technology. Sure, I have a lot to do in my work life and my to do list is often quite long (like right now!). If I'm really honest though, the feeling of being behind and not on top of things is just as much related to having not read through my facebook feed, that I'm terrible at keeping up on Twitter, that I have well over 100 articles to read from email subscriptions, that I haven't read the updates on NBCs ProBasketball Talk app and that there are so many movies and series in my Netflix list that I could take a month off and still not get through them all. And that's without even talking about blogs, podcasts, websites, ...
I want to get better at accepting that there is not going to be a day when I am fully caught up on all the information that is available to me. It's simply not possible.
I also want to accept that if/when I try to focus on those things, it is inevitably at the expense of other things I could be doing - especially relational opportunities with family and friends, most of which would have a lot more positive long-term impact.
As I process that, my major takeaways are these:
1. Let go of the desperate need to keep up. If I miss status updates on facebook, so be it. If some important news breaks and I don't hear about it, I'm sure eventually someone will let me know. And no, I haven't watched any episodes of Orange is the New Black, Breaking Bad or a bunch of other series on Netflix and I probably never will. I'm no less significant or capable because of it.
2. Continue to focus on intentionality. It's great to stay informed, but if that's at the expense of what's really important, it's actually a waste of time.
3. Get some better processes in place to be able to access information when I need to. I know there are tools that help to sort Twitter feeds, that it's possible to hide people's feeds on facebook that I really don't have contact with any more and I love being able to listen to podcasts at double speed. I just need to make sure I leverage those tools and others so that I can actually use technology for what it's supposed to be - a really helpful servant, rather than a crushing, impossible-to-please master.
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