Is information overwhelm preventing your success?

Information overwhelm is a subject I have written about before – and a trap I have to guard against continually myself.

Before the Internet age the term was “Paralysis by Analysis”. Being too consumed with analysing risk, opportunity, options and consequences. There was often insufficient information, but successful people went ahead and took action without it. Staying in the analysis mode was guaranteed to prevent progress.

Now it is the other side of the same coin, too much information from too many sources, some good, plenty mediocre and some terrible. The term “Information Overwhelm” does not roll of the tongue quite as well as “Paralysis by Analysis”. No doubt a new phrase will evolve from the endless chatter on social media.

Now it is too easy to get trapped at an earlier stage of the implementation cycle, not even getting to the stage of analysing options, staying in research and learning mode.

As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, it is too easy to fall into the “In our day we did / did not have /do / think /” habit of criticising new inventions and behaviours. I try not to do that, but as a reader of history, I am constantly reminded that hundreds, even thousands of years ago, huge empires were created by people without computers, smart phones or the Internet.

Those empires were created by people who took action, they just did what was needed.

I came across this interesting article “Start now, work hard” by Thomas Honeyman with some very simple advice about starting a successful business. It was published on the Medium.com site which has many more good posts on a range of subjects. So good that a visit there definitely needs a time limit to avoid the trap of too much reading and not enough action.

That’s it, a short post today, but Thomas’ article is worth reading and has valuable advice for anyone starting a business or any type of new venture.

Although our temperature will climb above freezing for the first time in weeks, it will not stay like that for long and the wood pile needs replenishing. Spending hours on collecting, cutting and splitting wood is irritating, but it’s better than spending around $1000 a month on furnace oil as many rural residents without access to natural gas or some form of wood burning heat source are having to do.

Surely Spring must be on its way.

Image courtesy of photoraidz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net