Maximum Internet Blog

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Everything is connected

As seen by all of our posts, creating a successful information filter consists of not just one action or strategy, but of several different kinds. Every action you take to create a healthy information diet is connected!

Curating information prevents distractions - the more you are able to refine searches to exactly what you want, remove cookies to prevent sites from ‘recommending’ you things, having separate accounts for professional or interest subject followings on social media, the better you are able to refine what results/posts you take in.

Having discipline allows you to focus on one task at a time rather than what we think is multitasking.

Removing set filter bubbles but also creating your own customized filters can assist in the volume of applicable information you are exposed to.

Going out of your way to expose yourself to opposing views, non-partisan sites, and challenging ideas your filters may not have shown you promote a healthy information filter.

There is no set method of creating an autonomous filter that is at the same time only relevant to your opinions and view-challenging. Like anything else, the most important thing you can do is take control of your filters, be informed of what strategies you can take advantage of, and sometimes purposely dive into information not usually relevant to your beliefs. Though filters can be dangerous in only feeding you one side of news, one’s indifference and apathy towards a healthy information filter may be even worse.

If you’d like to go back and read more:

Dealing with information overload

Curating your information

How to have a healthy info-diet

Keep disciplined

Don’t multitask! 

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Don’t multitask!

We can’t multitask as well as we think we can! This relates to the act of discipline and how it can assist you in creating a successful information filter (written about here).

So, focus on one task at a time. It is important to take the time to check your email or social media platform without going between sites. And, when you do go on to check your various platforms, clump together similar tasks (Shin, 2014). For example, check your RSS feed first. Then your social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. Follow up with Twitter, and then the news blogs you have followed.

When doing this, carve out measured chunks of time for each activity - 10 minutes for email, 10 minutes for twitter, 10 minutes for instagram, etc, and use a timer to ensure you are keeping to schedule.

If you can stick to the art of focusing on what you need to do at that particular moment, you will be doing yourself a huge service in only consuming a healthy amount.

If you’d like to read more:

Dealing with information overload

Curating your information

How to have a healthy info-diet

Keep disciplined

Everything is connected

Shin, Laura (14 November 2014). "10 Steps to Conquering Information Overload". Forbes.

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Keep disciplined

Discipline is a major part of having a healthy information filter. While your carefully created filter can block out unnecessary consumption, it can’t prevent you from the physical action of consuming.

(Source: Freeimages.com)

So...

Use a dedicated clock as an alarm - not your phone. It can lead you to check email, peruse social media, and inundate you with information right when you wake up.

Disable push notification and prevent items from popping up on your phone lock screen.

Spend only as much time on tasks as they are worth. In other words, don’t get absorbed into the task of checking your newsfeed. Stick to the allotted time you have given yourself in checking your instagram or twitter feed, lest you information overdose yourself.

Schedule time to check email and social media, and definitely be wise on how often you check your social media and email - too little and you miss certain news, too much and you risk an addiction to checking information availability.

If you’d like other tips on dealing with information overload, read more:

Dealing with information overload

Curating your information

How to have a healthy info-diet

Don’t multitask!

Everything is connected

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How to have a healthy info-diet

Since filtering the world around us is essential, we need to understand how a useful filter becomes a dangerous filter bubble. Social media and internet services track your history, likes, and interests to invisibly edit your collective newsfeed, only showing you things relevant to what you look at. Personally streamlining your content can also be dangerous, as you choose only to see what you want to see. Together, this can lead to the consumption of narrow world views, news, and information - if you don’t know something is missing, you don’t know what you have missed. While it can be harmless, Holone (2016) mentions how it can negatively affect people’s life choices by providing bad bias.

Think of it like looking through a telescope. You can see only what is in your view - without moving the telescope around you would fail to see the rest of the surrounding stars and planets! Imagine what it would be like only being able to see a 1 x 1 cm patch of sky for your whole life... (Source: Freeimages.com)

Deleting browser cookies, turning off targeted ads, and frequently deleting your search history can assist in this by throwing algorithms off of your scent-trail. But because of your self-curated feeds, you will still have the ability to fine tune the golden information from the garbage!

At the end of it all, a successful filter must include the conscious act of challenging yourself. On top of your finely-curated RSS feeds and instagram, frequent non-partisan news sites and click results and links to things which may not align with what you believe in. As Eli Pariser (2011)says in his TED Talk, a good information diet requires your information vegetables! It is healthy to be informed about things that challenge and inform your world view.

If you’d like to find out more, read further:

Dealing with information overload

Curating your information

Keep disciplined

Don’t multitask!

Everything is connected

Holone H. (2016). The filter bubble and its effect on online personal health information. Croatian medical journal, 57(3), 298-301.

Pariser, Eli. (March 2011). How to pop our filter bubbles. TED.

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Curating your information

The power of filtering information comes from techniques we need to incorporate into our daily routines. These techniques simply make our lives easier and at the end of the day, benefit you.

Curation is an important action to do. It streamlines the information we are looking at, and crunches down the number of websites we need to enter and trawl through to find what we need. A big time waster and information overloader is the action of distraction and curation will also aid in minimizing that.

RSS feeds to compile blogs and websites you are interested in allows you to stay on track without distraction.

You can find the RSS symbol on various blogs and websites. Clicking it provides users an easy way to subscribe to the RSS feed.

Similarly streamlining social media by compiling your accounts into a dashboard does the same thing.

Additionally, the issue of proper curation comes into play when you are searching for things on engines like Google - using proper search syntax to refine results provides you more accurate links to peruse, and has you slogging less through potentially unuseable material.

A screenshot of Google’s most common search syntax. (Source: Google)

If you’d like to read further:

Dealing with information overload

How to have a healthy info-diet

Keep disciplined

Don’t multitask!

Everything is connected

[maximuminternetblog-blog]

Dealing with information overload

In 2011, it was discovered that people consume 5 times more information than they did in 1986, which has the equivalency of 174 whole newspapers a day. It sounds like an absurd amount but just think - 72 hours of YouTube video are uploaded, 350,000 tweets are tweeted, and 49,000 Instagram posts are submitted every single minute. Coupled with many individuals being equipped with smartphones, data plans, and social media apps, it begins to be clear how we can consume so much.

Information overload is a term used to describe the phenomenon of there being so much information that one has difficulty making decisions. The human brain can only process so much information, and when faced with the incredible amounts of consumption occurring each and every day, our decision-making capacity is reduced (Speier, Valacich & Vessey 1999).

Clary Shirky notes in this quote that the core problem isn’t the intense amount of information in our lives, but the way in which we fail to filter out the information that isn’t applicable to us. Think of an apple farm where you harvest every fruit you can get your hands on - rotten and unripe ones are all picked indiscriminately. As a farmer, you would want a means of filtering out the bad apples from the good ones in the pursuit of productivity and efficiency.

Thus, what are some ways we can selectively harvest relevant information amidst all of the noise? How do you alleviate information overload?

Different techniques and methods marry together to create a filter for everything to fall through. The results lead to better decision making, increased certainty in the day to day intake of material and thinking, and more mental energy for everything else in your life.

When it is easier to sort through everything, you can find yourself resting a bit easier.

Check out the following posts on how to do just that:

Curating your information

How to have a healthy info-diet

Keep disciplined

Don’t multitask! 

Everything is connected

Asay, Matt (13 January 2009). "Shirky: Problem is Filter Failure, Not Info Overload".

Speier, C.; Valacich, J.S., & Vessey, I. (1999). "The Influence of Task Interruption on Individual Decision Making: An Information Overload Perspective". Decision Sciences. 30 (2): 337–360.