Sifting the Essential from the Non-Essential
Few things have more of an impact on your life and career than the ability to zero in on what really matters. Most information is irrelevant. Most of your time is wasted. Knowing what to ignore is the …
Too much information
The History of Cognitive Overload
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, a book by Daniel Levitin, has an interesting section on cognitive overload. Each day we are confronted with hundreds, probably …
Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, a book by Daniel Levitin, explores “how humans have coped with information and organization from the beginning of …
Why You Should Stop Reading News
Our obsession with being informed makes it hard to think long-term. We spend hours consuming news because we want to be informed. The problem is, the news doesn’t make us informed – quite …
More Information Doesn’t Mean Better Decisions
We tend to think that if we only had more information, we’d make better decisions. The world, however, doesn’t always work that way. Paradoxically, More information often means that we …
There is No Such Thing as Information Overload
Just as too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much information consumption can lead to stupidity. Clay Johnson’s book, The Information Diet, shows you how to thrive in this information …
The Problem With Information
Nassim Taleb in Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets: The argument in favor of “new things” and even more “new new things” goes as follows: Look at the dramatic …
Daniel Kahneman Explains Multitasking
Can we do several things at once? You can do several things at once, but only if they are easy and undemanding. What happens when we’re trying to do things that are not so simple? It is the mark …
The Noise Bottleneck: When More Information is Harmful
When consuming information, we strive for more signal and less noise. The problem is a cognitive illusion: we feel like the more information we consume the more signal we receive. While this is …
The Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
Many of us have constant access to information. We are so used to looking up the answer to any question immediately that it can feel like withdrawal when we have to wait. Of course, storing …
The power of lonely: What we do better without other people around
Spending time alone, if done right, can be good for you. Certain tasks and thought processes are best carried out without anyone else around. One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more …
Nicolas Carr: On Situational and Ambient Overload
Nicolas Carr with some interesting thoughts: Situational overload is not the problem. When we complain about information overload, what we’re usually complaining about is ambient overload. This …
Taleb: The Fooled by Randomness Effect and the Internet Diet?
In this brief article Nassim Taleb (of Black Swan fame) touches on information, complexity, the randomness effect, over-confidence, and signal and noise. THE DEGRADATION OF PREDICTABILITY — AND …