Learning in the Age of Information Overload
How to effectively learn, apply, and adapt lessons from others to your own life.
For a long time, whenever I had a question that I needed an answer to I would spend time searching the internet. With the abundance of blogs, YouTube videos, books, and podcasts — it’s easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of information.
This can be especially true in personal development where everyone has a perspective. There are 100s of coaches and successful mentors that it can be hard to figure out who to follow. I can’t even count the number of times I found myself lost on the information highway while looking for the exact article/blog that would change my life.
If you are anything like me you are constantly searching for ways to improve through the abundant resources of the internet. The reason that I ask so many questions is that I am looking for an edge. I want to figure out how to get better.
In this article, I am sharing the method I use for marginal improvements. This is one way of going about it without getting overwhelmed. The key is to start small and slowly incorporating new habits into your life.
Find a guide
When I’m seeking out personal development advice, I tend to stick with one or two individuals at a time. Meaning the podcasts and content I read will relate to those one or two individuals until I feel that I’m no longer resonating with their messages. This period could last a couple of weeks or months and months.
The point is when I find someone that has a powerful message that aligns with my beliefs, I want to follow them. I commit to learning what I can from them to help me live a better life.
One of the biggest realizations for me happened two years ago when I came across life coach Brendon Burchard. He is one of those writer/speaker coach types that has some great stuff. With proven success and clients like Orpah under his belt, he seems like the real deal.
Extract the most powerful lessons
The most powerful lesson that I learned from Brendon Burchard was in his book “High-Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way”. While the book as a whole is highly potent, I extracted one specific practice regarding the power of intention.
The power of intention might not be the most novel realization, but I’ve found the practice extremely valuable. Brendon emphasizes that to be a high performer we must be specific and clear about who we want to be. We must be specific about who we want to be so we can align our actions with that intention.
“Be more intentional about who you want to become. Have a vision beyond your current circumstances. Imagine your best future self, and start acting like that person today.”
― Brendon Burchard, High-Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way
He talks about this helpful practice where you pick out three words that you want to embody for the day. For example, in the morning I might decide that the traits I want to emulate are Confidence, Presence, and Focus.
If you said that every day, you wanted to be a joyous, optimistic, and caring person you would model your behavior to align with those intentions. At least that’s the theory.
Apply those lessons (practice)
The challenge with all of this, of course, is that our intentions don’t always align with our actions. In fact, we often find what we set out to do get muddied by the events of the day. What happens when you set out to be a patient, kind, and grounded person and immediately find frustration as you start the workday?
Brendon’s solution for this is to program the select the three programmed traits in your phone as timers throughout the day. That way when 2 pm hits and your find that you are grouchily going through your tasks you will hear a reminder alarm. Then you look down at your phone and see “Oh, I’m supposed to be a patient, kind, and grounded person”. Instantly you start to shift your inner dialogue to be more aligned with those intentions.
This is what makes us happy.
Honestly, this whole practice has been a game-changer. It’s the tiniest shift that has made a world of difference. It even helped me to break out of a huge career rut and start setting a direction for myself. The practice helped me to write an inspired first book, “What Should I do Next?” a feat I never thought possible.
The only reason this practice has made a difference for me is because I applied it. Rather, I experimented with it until a found a method that worked for me. I don’t use Brendon’s timer system. I tried it. Way too much for me.
Instead, I adapted his words in a way that would work for me. My small adjustment was to write the three words on the top of my day planner and my office whiteboard. Each day when I wrote out my hour to-do list, I would have the three traits I wanted to embody at the top.
Not all advice will work for you
I reflect on that lesson and think about how wonderful it is that the smallest lesson can change your life. Not every single insight you read will be a game-changer for you personally.
There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, not every single person has the same characteristics. Aside from the obvious fact that we are all different, we all have very different paths. Certain advice might not resonate with you because it’s so far removed from your current life situation.
This is kind of like when wealthy people tell struggling lower-class people that the only way to get ahead is to set aside 20% of your income month after month. Easy to say if your making 6 figures and don’t have to feed two kids as a single working parent. There are so many variations on what we call life experiences.
It is actually very important that we learn how to carve our own path in life. There is a tendency to want to learn exactly what to do from others. The belief that we all get hung up on is that the right course, the right mindset, or the right insight will change our life. What we miss though is it’s not one thing.
If the knowledge you seek isn’t working for your life circumstance, move on. Find what works and what works for your situation. Even great advice isn’t helpful if it can’t be applied to your unique circumstances.
Creating your blueprint
Developing as a person requires many different lessons. Most of these lessons need to be learned by us the individual. No one else can learn our lessons.
We forget that we are all unique and that what we do, the knowledge we seek, and how to learn is the very thing that sets us apart.
The best way to find success in our life is to create our own life blueprint. It is up to us to blaze our own trail. The only way to do that is to continue progressing. Explore while trying new things. Experiment while finding out what works for us and what doesn’t.
As we continue to adapt new lessons to our life we can combine them into a new way of living. All of the things we learn eventually work together to give us a plan that is specific to us.
Regardless, you will still face challenges
Life can be difficult. There are many ups and downs. Sometimes we find that everything in our lives is going perfectly well then, an event happens and shit hits the fan.
I’ve recently dealt with a huge setback. Less than 1 year into our new home, heavy rains flooded and completely destroyed our finished basement. Honestly, it sucks spending hard-earned savings just to get back to baseline.
More than that this came during a quarantine where many, us included are stuck inside. The basement was the place my wife and I hung out. It was designed to be cozy, and comfortable. It also made up half our living space.
I say all this because this was one of those curve balls that life can throw. I had to learn to get over it myself. I didn’t want to take a course about how to get over shitty things that happen in your life. Is there a course for that? My point is some experiences can’t be taught. We are all dealing with circumstances that we haven’t planned for.
The way we get stronger is being present enough to use unfavorable situations as opportunities for growth. One day someone might go through a similar situation as us. When we’ve figured out a few things on our own, we can teach others. We can share perspective.
It’s a comfort knowing that you are not alone in your struggles.
Adaptation
This is why I believe that it’s so important to learn to go with the flow because plans don’t always work out. Even the most scheduled person can have his/her life thrown off. If we never learn to adapt to the curve balls that come our way then we aren’t really learning how to grow.
Every single person has a deep-seated potential inside of them. Many of us know this to be true. We are constantly looking for ways to improve ourselves. Picking up new routines and habits. Reading new books and generally looking for answers.
Realize this. The answers you are seeking are different from others. At any one moment, we are all at a different place in our lives. Meaning we require different perspectives to show us our path forward. Sometimes the best way it to figure this out on your own.
The internet is great because it can provide us insight. We still have to use our own filters to figure out what advice works well for us. The very act of filtering allows us to use lessons in a way that works specifically for us. Only after we’ve processed information and applied it to our own lives can we know what does and doesn’t work.