5 Compelling Reasons to Readjust Your Information Diet, and How to Do It

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During the last few years I have cut down on and readjust much of the information I bring into my life.

I don’t own a TV. I quickly scan the headlines of a major Swedish newspaper perhaps 5 times a week. I never listen to the radio. I check my emails once in the morning and once before going to bed. I don’t subscribe to any RSS-feeds (but visit a few blogs a few times a week).

I didn’t use to be that way. I used much of my time and energy to take a in a whole lot of information of all different kinds. Why did I change this?

Well, here are five compelling reasons to take a look at your own information intake and perhaps do some trimming and readjusting.

Everyone has to find their own balance and so on of course. And I’m not saying that my way is the best way either. Just that it may be a good idea to have a look at how much information and what information you bring into your life. And to be a bit careful with what you let into your head since that can have a big influence on your thoughts and beliefs.

1. Fear.

There can be quite a bit of fear in, for instance, what you read in the paper or see on the news. Now it’s useful to be updated on various things. But to spend hours each week in a sort of environment filled with fear is perhaps not the best thing to expose your mind to. It can certainly make you more fearful of many things in your life and of things that might happen.

However, many of the things we fear in our minds never really seem to come into reality. Fearful information feeds such thought habits and fantasies though. And so unnecessary suffering is created in your mind and life.

2. Negativity

There is also quite a bit of negativity in all kinds of forms on, for example, internet forums or other places online. I used to read one forum pretty much every day a few years ago. Every time I left the forum I felt some frustration, stress or other kinds of vague negative feelings within. And I didn’t get that much pratical information out of it either.

So finally I realized that I had to stop doing this. To be able to keep a positive attitude in your daily life it’s vital to reduce the time you spend on things that just feeds negativity into it.

3. Reinforces your old behaviour patterns.

If you want to change and grow then spending a lot of time steeped in fear and negativity is a good way to sabotage your own progress. To become who you want to be and get what you want out of life you have to be selective and put your focus in the right places. And cut out or reduce the old stuff that is holding you back.

Otherwise you may be working on your personal growth, say for an hour each day. Maybe you read a personal development book and do the exercises in the book. And then you go on to marinate your thoughts in negativity for few hours through various outputs of information. It’s a bit like trying to get in shape, going out for a run and then going home to eat a whole birthday cake.

Use the information that is necessary for your goals and for what you find useful in life. Take in more information that supports those things. And less information that just works against them.

4. Takes up time and takes you away from what’s important in your life.

Sometimes you just want to relax in front of the TV. But too much of that may not be the most useful way to go about things. Sure, it’s easy. But you could also use that time – perhaps several hours each week – for something more exciting and fulfilling. It’s your choice.

5. Information overload that decreases your ability to make decisions and take action.

I’ve written several times about how just taking in more personal development information can make you feel like you are making progress. It’s an emotional high of sorts. But at the end of the month you may find you haven’t gotten that much done. Just reading and reading becomes a sort of avoidance of what’s really important.

And an overload of any kind of information can have negative effects. It can decrease your focus and make you confused. It can results in a lot of time spent either procrastinating or over thinking things way too much.

A better way to spend much of your time to get some real results is often just to take action. Have a look at Do You Make These 5 Mistakes When You Try to Take Action? and How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips.

How to change your information habits

Now, how do you go about changing your habits in this area? I’m certainly no expert at it, but here are a few tips I have found helpful.

Just do it.

This is pretty much my favourite way to get anything done these days. It becomes a lot easier when you learn to stay present more and more of the time and as you learn to not take your thoughts and emotions that may be holding you back so seriously.

So if you want to stop reading the newspaper for two hours a day just do it. Doing it this way also strengthens this mental habit – a sort of “just do it” muscle that grows stronger as you exercise it – and makes it easier to just get things done in other parts of your life too.

Replace your habit with another habit.

Another way to change one habit is to replace the vacuum it may leave in your life with another habit. So instead of watching TV that extra hour each day you may go for a walk or to the gym. You can read more about it in One Really Simple Tip for Removing Bad Habits.

Ask yourself: is this useful?

I ask myself this pretty often. If for instance a TV-show or magazine isn’t bringing me anything useful – fun, fascination, useful tips etc. – then why am I spending my time on it? It’s kinda easy to just fall into a habit of doing stuff or consuming things without really having much of reason for doing so.

Find out what you really like to do.

That will probably be more interesting that surfing the net or TV-channels randomly. And so these less exciting things just tend to fall away from your life as you find things that you really like to do, like for instance a new hobby. How do you find such a thing? Try things. Experiment.

Set times for when you are allowed to watch/read.

Instead of checking your email or some forum many times each day, set times for when you are allowed to check it. I try to, for instance, only check my emails once in the morning and once before bed. It doesn’t always work, but I am getting better and better at sticking to those times.

If you check emails, website statistics, RSS-feeds, forums a bit compulsively think about why you are doing it. One reason I found was to get external validation. To get a short burst of validation from other people by checking how many people that had read my blog recently or just from new emails in my inbox. When you recognize such a desire within it becomes easier to make a conscious decision to not check in instead of just following along with that needy impulse.

Remind yourself to the reasons above when you feel like reverting to your old habit.

Just a quick reminder may be all you need.

Don’t beat yourself up.

If you fail and revert back to your old habits for a day, don’t beat yourself up. It happens to pretty much everyone. Just get back on track again the next day. Beating yourself up is just a waste of time and energy.

One last thing; you may think to yourself that your information consumption has no negative effects on you. I thought so at least. But when I stepped away form some information and retooled my habits I started to feel less negative feelings like stress or fear. You may not notice the effect until you make a change. One suggestion would simply be to retool your own habits for 30 days and see what happens.

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