Information overload is the new pandemic.
We’ve become information junkies. The internet has overloaded us with information. Then social media 10X’d it. And now AI slop has 100X’d it.
I don’t know about you, but I’m drowning.
If I get one more email from someone who wants me to read their god damn 20-hour book, my head is going to explode. Books from unknown authors are dead. Why?
No one can afford to risk 20 hours of their time on a book written by an unknown person. So they will read books, but only if they already trust the author.
This is what information overload has done to humanity. It’s sad.
The false god is that gathering more information will solve our biggest problems. That’s clearly a lie. We have more information than ever and simultaneously more problems than ever. The simple life has been replaced with the complex life for most people. Every channel to someone’s brain is noisy.
Brain rot is everywhere too.
So the goal for you must NOT be to endlessly collect information.
# The hidden problem of information gathering
You’re addicted to collecting information and probably don’t know why.
Writer Sahil Bloom simplified the problem for me:
>Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. It’s the dopamine from reading, planning, or learning, but never doing.
I wasn’t lying when I said we’re information junkies.
Just like junkies are addicted to heroin, we’re all addicted to gathering information because it gives us the drug of dopamine. Dopamine runs our brain's entire reward system. That’s why you’re addicted. It’s biological.
You can only defeat the addiction with an understanding of what’s going on, and a ruthless level of discipline to stop consuming so much info.
When you collect information, you feel like you’re making progress.
The information you collect gets added to a plan, strategy or set of actions you intend to take in the future. The problem is plans always get f*cked up by life.
Everything sounds like a good plan until you get punched in the face, sued by a stranger, or fired from a job you spent 10 years working at.
The entropy of the universe guarantees your fantasies of plans and future actions will never come true. Yet most people can’t see the information-gathering mirage. They genuinely trust themselves and the world that chaos won’t find them.
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