Live Healthy Live Well

Is the fact that you receive so much information everyday stressful to you? Does the information needed to make a decision or remain informed about a topic flood in from too many sources/places? Is too much information filling your time and making it impossible to digest it all? How can you de-stress and avoid information overload?
Below are a few ideas of ways to help you avoid being overloaded:
Set up a filing system using only topics that are important and of interest to you. These will be topics that you care about. You might find that once you have this set up, if articles, pamphlets or booklets don’t fit the categories you have you will not save them.
Select your subscriptions carefully. If you delete or set aside newsletters every time they come and never get around to reading them you may want to be taken off the subscription list.
Combine items with like content into one document. Attach a reference list to the document.
Go through the newspapers, magazines and journals when they arrive. Tear out articles of interest and throw out the remaining items.
Keep a file or envelope of points of interest. This can include new books, websites, social media sites etc.. Once a month go through this file and obtain anything useful. Bookmark useful websites for quick locating.
Sometimes calling or stopping in to talk to someone is quicker and less work than e-mailing them. When e-mailing we spend a lot of time clarifying our message costing us more time and energy.
Unless the information is not likely to change, discard it at the 5 year point.
Divide the reading or research by joining or starting a book or journal club.
When you do read an article or book write an abstract so you do not have to re-read it the next time. This will save you time later.
These tips may not save you from information overload all the time, but hopefully at least one tip or more will be useful while decreasing your stress of overload!
Source: RD411.com
Author: Liz Smith, Family and Consumer Science Educator, Ohio State University Extension.