Information Overload

I’ve just spent the last hour clearing out over 600 old emails from my inbox. The earliest ones date back to 2016. Unfortunately there’s even more to go through. (Yes, I’m one of those people who have a couple thousand emails piled in their inbox. I’m working on it!)

Also unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to clear them out. In the past, I’ve started with my oldest emails looking for the ones that feel safe to delete, aka the ones that no longer seem relevant. But so many do. There are emails on self-help, self-publishing, recipes, courses I signed up for and never completed, gift certificates that probably don’t work anymore but maybe do.

I’ll read this one day, I tell myself. But not today, because I don’t have time.

And that’s the trap, isn’t it? Information feels incredibly valuable. There’s always the potential that any piece of content I come across contains something new, something that’s going to make me think about a topic in an entirely new way. So if I have access to that and don’t read it, isn’t that wasting something precious?

It’s taken me a long time to realize that learning something new doesn’t mean I’ve added value to my life.

That feels almost sacrilegious to say because having access to information is such an empowering and important thing. There’s privilege in being able to read, access the internet consistently, access libraries, buy books and courses.

But that doesn’t mean that everything out there actually has value for me. That’s what I constantly forget (and probably why I have so many unread emails). Anything I’m not intentionally engaging with is actually distraction.

That’s a huge problem. First of all, because time is limited. If I’m reading, watching, or listening to something I only half care about, I’m not using my limited time on something I’m excited about or engaged in. Second, because the older I get the more I realize the hard drive of my brain can only hold so much information. It’s a toss up of what’s actually going to be remembered long term. I can still remember the names of characters from tv shows I watched ten years ago but can’t remember most of the names or properties of the medicinal herbs I’m learning about right now, which feels a lot more important these days. So if I want what I’m remembering to be something I value, then I need to be prioritizing that information and spending a lot less time with the information I don’t find valuable. And lastly because the more time I have for silence and spaciousness, the more I’m actually able to absorb, integrate, and creatively apply what I’m learning.

How often do I give myself the time to do that? Almost never. Space and silence are underrated in today’s day and age. But creativity doesn’t happen when I’m constantly consuming information. If being creative is one of the most valued parts of my life (and it is), then I need to consume less. A LOT less.

It feels like I’m being a little too serious about this. Like, do I really need to scrutinize what I’m engaging with that much?

When I can read tens of emails in the course of an hour or view hundreds of Instagram posts in the same amount of time, I think the answer has to be yes because there are so many sources vying for my attention and none of them is willingly going to let go.

And of course, the definition of what’s valuable changes depending on what I need in that moment. Sometimes what brings me value is information that’s going to help me in my career. Sometimes it’s watching cute dog videos to help me decompress from a hard day at work. It doesn’t have to be serious and important all the time. The what is less important the why. The more I focus on why, the more meaningfully I will spend my time.

So this time, when faced with hundreds of emails that could have something interesting in them, I delete them immediately without reading through them. Because if I haven’t read them in 5-10 years, I’m probably not missing out on anything meaningful to me. And with a few clicks of my mouse, my life feels a little less cluttered and a little more spacious.

P.S. If you’re reading this, thank you so much. I know your time could be spent in so many ways. If you find value in my posts, I invite you to sign up for my email list below and receive these into your inbox (and yes, I do recognize the weight of that invitation after this post—please only do it if it’ll be valuable). Or if know someone who might find value in this post, it would mean so much if you would share it with them.