How Much Information Do You Consume?

Are you suffering from information overload? Time management expert Laura Stack calls “incoming information” one of the “biggest time and energy wasters in your day.” If you’re feeling short on time—and who isn’t these days?—she suggests going on a “low-information diet,” cutting out unproductive meetings, checking e-mail only a few times per day and even canceling magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

“I haven’t regularly watched the news or read a newspaper in fifteen years,” she writes. “To be honest, most of the news out there just isn’t the kind of thing that really impacts my family, my business, or me. And quite frankly, a big chunk of what gets reported will do little more than make me feel angry or even depressed.”

Although I won’t go so far as to cut out news entirely—I find that much of the news does pertain to me and my family, if indirectly—I can see Stack’s point. The onslaught of information is overwhelming, and no matter how much I consume, I consistently feel that I’m not as informed as I could be.

But I have taken steps to cut back, as Stack suggests. I’ve reluctantly phased out many of my magazine subscriptions (I'm a journalist and a magazine junkie, so this was hard), and I read only the articles that really interest me. I used to think that in order to get my money’s worth, I needed to read every word. I ended up with a pile of unread periodicals.

My news diet consists primarily of listening to NPR every morning while I get ready for work and again when I’m cooking dinner. When I have time, I’ll read the newspaper or tune in to “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” in the evening. I use Google Reader to scan the posts of a few favorite blogs most days.

Now that I've taken some of the pressure off myself, I feel informed but not as overwhelmed. I enjoy reading again. For a while, reading a magazine or a newspaper was a chore; it felt like crossing off one more item on my to-do list.