An information addiction will show itself in multiple ways.
The essence is hoarding information but not doing anything with it. Like how a hoarder will keep their trash thinking they will one day have a use for it, information hoarders hoard information with no real intention of ever using it, or process to manage/incorporate new information.
You can avoid information hording by sorting your data as part of your Setup Sunday routine.
Information hoarders do nothing with the information they collect. They think collecting information will be useful for later, but “later” never comes. They continue to collect information without using it.
This is negative because hoarding information locks you into a perpetual state of preparation without action.
Examples of Information Hoarding
- Extensively researching colleges to apply to without applying to them.
- Reading articles & books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos about working out and training, but not training.
- Reviewing cooking content, saving recipes for later, buying cookbooks, but not cooking.
- Preparing for anything via research and study, without doing the task the preparation serves for an extended period.
- Reading and studying reviews for an extensive amount of time for a product or service that is inexpensive in importance and/or cost.
- Scrolling social media unconsciously.
- Having an archive of notes in Evernote, notebooks, and journals, without reviewing or organizing the information. You don’t need to review journaling that acts as a life archive, but journals that contain specific information regarding a mastery, or other aspect of performance must be reviewed.
Information gathered must be used in a timely manner or it is wasted. Data has a useful lifespan, like all things.
Information that serves as a reference should be referred to in an appropriate length of time or should be organized away, or deleted, for cleanliness.
Information can be hoarded in the physical space, too. Do you need to keep a dishwasher manual out in the open? Or can it be placed in a file cabinet with other manuals, or thrown away and reviewed online when needed? Or is it needed at all, if you’re the type to hire a professional to repair an appliance?
Be ruthless with removing what does not add value to your lifestyle.
What to do if you’re hoarding information
If you are an information hoarder, the first thing to do is stop hoarding until you have organized at least 50% of your archives. You must create a cadence to process information. This can be accomplished by adding a digital cleanup to your Setup Sunday protocol.
People will unwittingly create years worth of saved content that is no longer relevant or interesting, which creates more work in the future when you clean it up–which sounds like the same problem as a hoarder of physical items.
Information hoarding creates a significant amount of noise that makes further research and information gathering muddled, disorganized, and confusing. Having too much information can also slow you down on the path by waying down your mind.
You don’t necessarily have to consume the information you have hoarded either. Organizing it into lists, spreadsheets, and other data-visualization formats is appropriate. We need to make a process for our data consumption.
The key concept to be aware of is data management; akin to how one manages their physical space. If you have too much tupperware, or too many articles of clothing, you sell, donate, or throw them out. We need to do the same with the information we hold.
Designate a cadence for cleaning up your information archives. We recommend at least once a week.
The ideal position is everything organized in its place. You have a saved place for chaos that does not overflow into order, and you have a method for using the information you collect.
Below are some symptoms of information hoarding.
1. You have content saved that is older than a year you plan to consume later
This symptom implies that the content is saved and NOT in an organized format. If you have movies in your IMBD list that you plan to watch, you don’t need to remove them. That is an orderly list. You could remove movies you are no longer interested in watching, but the list is fine because it is in an organized list. You should review your organized lists periodically to look for cuts.
People who use Reddit will save interesting posts and do nothing with those posts for years. Sometimes never. Instagram users save posts and never review them.
Social media tricks you into thinking you are learning. Learning happens at depths; social media is a puddle: shallow and evaporating and dirty.
The benefit of creating a Setup Routine like with Setup Sunday, is having a day to batch-handle off-path activities in one day that allow you to progress further down the path and have more time in general.
On Sunday, you can review your digital content and knock down saved articles, saved posts, saved images, notes, etc. Remember you don’t have to consume what you have collected in the moment; you can organize it more instead.
If someone had a pile of newspapers that were five years old, you may judge that person. We don’t judge people who hoard information because we cannot see it. Things we cannot see still have an affect on our bodies, minds, and spirits.
Information you come across may give you valuable insights that could dramatically change your life. It’s important to have the information organized into some kind of categorization as opposed to being in one, general saved area blended with all kinds of content. You can have a “catch all” for new information. This is where chaos goes. But you need to have a cadence for turning that chaos into order.
2. You collect more than you consume
You shouldn’t spend more time collecting content for later than consuming content. To explain further, you shouldn’t use an RSS Feed like Feedly(free)and save articles for later for thirty minutes, while not reading anything. This creates organizational work for later even though it feels like you’re doing something.
This is a general lifestyle suggestion and does not apply to all situations.
You want to avoid going to media sources to save media for later, but not engaging with that source. Like going to YouTube to save videos for later, and not watching the videos you have saved for later.
Pay attention to the size of your backlogs. Maybe you can work through a backlog before adding more to it. Or clean up a backlog that has outdated content so you can make room for more, and make a cadence for that backlog.
An appropriate backlog size will differ between the medium and the individual. If you have over 400 YouTube videos saved in your watch later playlist, and the oldest video is from 2015, you should consider cleaning up the archives and using discipline to watch some of the content instead of collecting more of it.
Remember that information has an expiration date.
Some gamers will spend more time reading reviews, watching playthroughs, reading tips, looking for deals, and watching reviews than actually playing a game. So they develop game backlogs, especially when games go on sale. This happens often with PC gaming.
Researching what is relaxing is not relaxing. Wanderers need time off the path to rest and recover. Balance preparation and action. If you have a backlog of video games, play them before you buy new ones. This will also reduce your spending velocity so now you have more money to invest. By investing with Robinhood you can get $5 for free.[AFFILIATE LINK]
Newer games are more expensive, and games always go on sale in the future. You have to realize that new does not mean better. It means different.
You can tell you are addicted to information if you are checking just to check; not to post, not to message a friend, not to respond to a message from a friend. Opening Instagram without purpose and to occupy your time is accepting babysitting from a corporation that wants to use you like a battery to steal your time so it can make money.
Google the CEO’s of the company’s who manipulate your time. Think about their punchable faces every time you unconsciously trade your time to give them money. You change the world by changing yourself.
When you scroll Instagram unconsciously you make Mark Zuckerberg richer. He STEALS the time you could use to improve yourself or spend time with family & friends so he can profit. In that arrangement, you are the sucker. Stop being played.
Track how many times you open a social media app with the native function on your smart device.
When you are using a social media app and become aware of it, which is the point where you regain conscious control of your thoughts, have an internal dialogue about your comfort and willingness to be unconsciously controlled by a corporation that seeks to extract time and money from you.
Too many people are entirely accepting and even appreciating of being money batteries in service of corporations. Understand that using social media mindlessly feeds more power to the feudal-corporate system and reinforces the Serf position for all those who lack major capital.
There is no reason to check your timelines 20+ times per day. Using social media to be social by messaging is different, but be aware that messages serve as a gateway to the brain-rot of scrolling.
If you check social media less frequently, you will save time and see the best most engaging content because you aren’t part of the initial few who the algorithm uses to determine what to show to people who check social media less often. We want more time on the path.
One method to not get sucked into social media is the Sunday Paper method.
Checking once a day is more than enough. If you can check your accounts once a week, you can usually sort by the best of the week on many information platforms. This allows you to see the best content without being used by the platform to find the best content for people who look less often than you.
4. You fill in-between time with more information
You always see individuals who are waiting for something else to happen bending their necks to stare into the light of their devices.
Waiting for lunch to end? Scroll Instagram. Waiting in line to buy groceries? phone. Wait at the doctor’s office? Social media. Watching television? also watching the phone. Just did a set at the gym? Use phone until next set.
Millennials and older remember the time before the smartphone revolution. Driving, going on a walk, and waiting in line, were all times to reflect or to meditate. This is the time when you would process your thoughts and consider your position in the world, as well as what you want while you are here.
If you’re constantly filling up with information, you don’t have the opportunity to sort, discard, or reprocess what you currently have. This is one reason to think about your podcast-listening habits.
Does doing one thing at a time make you anxious? How long can you spend without your phone?
5. You spend more than an hour on your phone a day
This specifically applies to phone use that is not utilitarian. For example, you should not count using GPS as phone time, studying Spanish with Duolingo, writing, or other meaningful-based skill acquisition that has a path to mastery.
The average American spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone per day, according to data from 11,000 users from 2018. Given technology’s increasing desire for our attention for their profit, this number has risen today. [1]
If you spend four hours on your phone each day, you spend 16.67% of your day on your phone. That is 60 days per year. Two months’ time given to corporations and shareholders that don’t care whether you live or die. They want your time because it pays them. We must be better than this and promote control over technology corporations amongst our peers.
Aim to use technology as a tool to help you get what you want. Too many people are used by their technology and they do not progress far. Avoid regrets by living a full life now.
6. You have not progressed in any skills
Gathering information does not make progress. It creates work, which may or may not lead to progress. Consuming information feels like progress is being made, or some kind of acquisition occurs, which hides the truth that consuming information as an addict prevents you from improving in life.
- The goal of any individual should be the endless pursuit of mastery.
- The goal of any society should be the endless maintenance and improvement of the social contract.
Knowing many things shallowly is inferior to knowing a single thing deeply, yet the content peddled by technology companies is 90% shallow.
Our minds are fish that need deep water to thrive.
Saboteur technology peddlers give us puddles and convince us it’s in our best interest to drown in them. Lives are meaningless in puddles–meaningless lives are difficult and full of suffering. Going to the depths–going to mastery–nourishes body, mind, and spirit, while granting the wanderer indiscriminate power.
Social media, including Reddit, is knowing many things shallowly. Puddle knowledge is a temporary tattoo that will not stay in your mind. To know something deeply is to etch it into the stone of the mind.
One reason for power imbalances is the rift between shallow and deep minds. A deep mind is required to understand personal serfdom, as a deep mind is the way to understand all things.
If you know the way broadly, you will see it in all things
By going to the depths you increase your capacity in all things.
Application
Control your information consumption.
Setup a cadence to use the information you hold. Understand the potential for habitual information hoarding exists. By being aware you are conscious and can think about it.
Addiction is a ritual that becomes part of your brain and is a difficult enemy to slay. When trying to slay a dragon, the hero uses all items that can help him be victorious. He wouldn’t use half the items at his disposal because he wants the highest probability of victory. This is how you must fight addiction, as well as all the other battles in your life.
If you’re trying to reduce information consumption, use everything at your disposal. Think creatively about how to solve your problems. Seek out solutions.
If you have been hoarding information, slow or stop the acquisition of new data until you sort your existing data. Process your backlogs so they can add value instead of proving useless due to time decay.
Avoid Hoarding information that will not be used in the present.