• We tin can only deal with so many pieces of information at once, only today we are faced with an 'infodemic';
  • The trouble goes beyond too many piece of work emails: we have stronger information data probes and fewer filters than ever;
  • The benefits of walking and reading could offer a better solution than limiting information access, synthesizing information or relying on institutions and workplaces to respond.

You might have come across this thought experiment: if I throw i ball at you, you catch it and if I throw two balls at yous at the aforementioned time, you will have just enough time and skill to catch both. If I throw seven balls at you at the same fourth dimension, however, not merely will you not catch all seven, you won't take hold of any.

This tells us something very simple: nosotros can only concentrate on a few things at a time.

Our brains are built to relegate about of the information we receive to the subconscious strata of our minds so nosotros can concentrate on what is effectually the states and brand sense of information technology. If we tried to consciously register every tiny particular of information that reached us, we would go out of our minds.

Forgetting is not only natural, it is necessary. This is why in our cerebral architecture, working retention is relatively weak every bit compared to long-term retention. The purpose of working retention is to sort information and chop-chop decide what to concord onto and what to store for subsequently employ or only forget. Our psychic free energy is limited and we can merely bargain with so many pieces of information at once (for well-nigh people between three to four things).

One of the problems with today's world is the infodemic, a relentless seismic sea wave of data – some of it fake – that batters against our inboxes. Most people working in organizations are aware of the trouble which is acquired by a perceived need to push out more than and more communication without realizing that the attending span and available time of recipients is limited. It becomes incommunicable to go along abreast of the memos and updates, not to mention the compliance measures and ever-growing bureaucratic tasks to attain.

As the sarcastic and quixotic British functionary Cyril Northcote Parkinson in his 1950s treatise Parkinson's Law points out, bureaucratic creep in organizations is inescapable and, paradoxically, often correlates inversely with productivity. Furthermore, in the age of COVID-nineteen, closed offices and digital communication, many positions can only justify their productivity by competing even more ferociously for e-mail, newsletter, round and fifty-fifty video messaging space. The employees' inbox becomes a sort of theatre of successive existential soliloquies played to an unwilling audience who become similar Alex, the protagonist of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, forced to watch films every bit office of his 'cure'.

But the problem goes across too many piece of work emails, especially when 1 turns to social media. We have stronger data data probes and fewer filters than ever.

To share knowledge, 1 tin can self-publish, promote thoughts through open up platforms or simply postal service straight on social media. Similar virtually things in life, there is a adept and bad side to this. The good side is that nosotros tin hear many more than voices and bypass the restrictive, sometimes politicized gatekeepers of noesis production, assuasive for more spontaneous and various expression; the bad side is that what comes out has no stamp of approval or quality control. It tin can, therefore, range from the opinionated and unsubstantiated to conspiracy theories and total garbage.

Data created on the internet in one minute graphic

Information created on the internet in one minute

Epitome: Statista

Oscar Wilde once said: "[I]northward the quondam days, books were written past men of messages and read past the public. Nowadays books are written past the public and read by nobody." The quip is wistful, possibly vicious, merely not without truth: anybody has a voice, no ane has the time to read everything and what is said can be called into question at any point.

The democratization of knowledge through the web, growing access to information and the increasingly rapid circulation of information make it hard to keep beside of things – to put it mildly. Worse still, with the COVID-19 pandemic tying us all to our screens, more is said, more circulates and more is pushed out. As each cyberspace user is able to post, data increases at an untenable pace. The vortex of the internet, that addictive crucible of text and images leaves the caput throbbing, eyes stinging and working retentiveness floundering to concord on to whatever of the multiple threads of endless information.

Is there whatever calorie-free at the finish of the infodemic tunnel?

I reaction is to synthesize, hence the 21st-century appetite for sound bites, headlines and loftier-end summaries. 'Big ideas', 'big history' and TED talks limited to an absolute maximum of 18 minutes; the Gen Z addiction of increasing the speed of YouTube tutorials, skipping Netflix introductions and the production of apps that synthesize books into 20-minute digests – these all plunge us into a globe of bulimic data consumption.

This trend is problematic. It leads to superficiality and signalling without substance. The more syntheses at that place are, the more these syntheses become information that needs to exist synthesised still once again, a type of mise en abyme of endlessly compacted fractals or a Fibonacci sequence rushing to the origin of a screw that we volition never observe unless we get in at some sort of dull, meaningless monosyllabic cliche.

Another solution is to look people to email less, to refrain from communicating when it is not necessary and to post less data or to censor it. This isn't viable: telling people not to communicate is hardly a happy scenario to entertain and who chooses what is said, when and by whom?

At that place are a number of institutional reactions we might have. These involve pushing for more mindfulness and meditation in the workplace, such equally 'no cyberspace days' in the function. But I would debate that the best remedy to the infodemic, which is not going away, requires personal steps that each of usa can take, alone and in our families.

There is nothing quite like reading a book, slowly and carefully, from cover to cover. I'm not talking virtually racing through a number of books in the way that some media claim CEOs do in a year. I hateful slow, peaceful recreational reading, especially of the classics. Something by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Vikram Seth, Toni Morisson, Yusanari Kawabata or Ngugi Wa Thiong'o – something with depth.

Much has been written well-nigh the boggling benefits of reading. Getting children to read out loud has tremendous benefits for their minds and there is something beautiful about a parent reading their children to sleep with a bedtime story, perchance leaving the listener on a cliffhanger or eager to hear the next affiliate the following night. This is non just good for the focus and mindfulness of the child, only the parent as well.

At that place is also nothing quite like going for a walk. Non a walk while you plough through your phone messages, nor a hurried, anxiously deliberate 'health' walk while listening to your earphones. No, a slow walk, perhaps with a meaning other or a friend, merely observing life and listening to the sounds most yous. A moment of peace and tranquillity. If Aristotle's followers were known as the peripatetics, it's considering they noticed that their ideas flowed better while walking. One-to-i business concern meetings and even educational meetings tin can be washed through a walk.

To surf the net, send another e-mail, baulk at our 'to-do list', blitz to the next task; or to read, walk and breathe? That is the question. Now that yous've read this article, close the computer or telephone, go for a long walk. When yous come back, pick up that book yous go along telling yourself y'all should read and do simply that for at least 30 minutes.