Information Overload: When is it time to start DOING and stop THINKING?
There were a few months recently where I cut ties with all feed readers, twitter accounts, emails (except my business email) and a lot of other online stuff and just got down to business. Wait, let me back track for a minute. There were a few months (before the ones I just mentioned of course) where I was an information junkie. I’d read every blog I could come across, I’d spend 5-6 hours a day working with tutorials just to see if I could get the outcome the tutorial subscribed, I’d write a ton of thoughts and ideas down, I’d gameplan strategize for hours.
What I got out of that time was nothing. I learned a lot – yes – but I never moved forward with anything. So that’s where todays topic comes from – when is it time to start DOING something and stop THINKING about it?Back to the initial sentence of this article – I learned that I needed to be unplugged from the world. I needed to focus solely on my business and cut out all of the other white noise that would suck my time dry. I realized that reading and thinking about productivity for hours a day wasn’t that productive. Doing this allowed me so much more time – time to work, time with friends and family, time to relax and do nothing. Regardless of what I was doing, it wasn’t planning – it was doing – and I liked it.
Is there a cut off point for when it’s time to read/study/plan and when it’s time to do/act/work? I believe that there is. I found that cut off point in recent months and I thoroughly enjoyed the outcome of cutting off for a while. But the one thing I realized was that I lacked balance. By studying/reading/thinking all day and doing nothing else, there was no ‘down time’ balance or any ‘work time’ balance. I realized that I am the type of person that dives into something full force until I get bored with it (ie: my weight lifting battle – but thats another story). By realizing these things I was able to start working on finding a balance.
So how do I now balanace everything?
It’s pretty simple actually – I open up my google calendar, fill out the work I need to do for the week and then fill in the off days or days I do not have a LOT to do with reading/studying. At the time of writing this article I just finished updating two separate clients website designs and I now have 7 open tabs in google chrome – all productivity/business/design related. It’s pretty simple actually – a lot more simple than reading and trying to find out a perfect method for “getting things done” that so many people spend precious hours on daily.
So how do YOU balance everything?
Is there a set time/place that you read and study or do you just jumble it all together? Let me know in the comments as I am sure there are other people reading this article who would like to know as well. And when you’re done doing that – get back to work! 
edited: I thought it would be nice to show what I’m actually reading – giving my readers here a nice look into what gets my mind running so much. Below is a list of all of the current tabs I have open.
- All the advice on happiness you’ll ever need in one post
- 20 classic Zen Habits posts you might not have seen yet
- Expression not Impression
- Motivate Thyself
- Branded Tweetdeck – great idea or waste of time
- 19 Presence Management chores you COULD do every day
* image credit: akaalias
