To deal with information overload one should reduce the quantity, improve the quality and make it easy to process.
Also, it is very important to be hungry to find out information, to digest it like your favorite food, take it like medicine with attention.
General guidelines:
1) How much is enough
In most cases, you need to make a rough idea about how much information you need and what constitutes satisfactory information. This way, you know when to stop.
2) Look for good sources
One should look for alternate sources with different approaches or characteristics such as level of detail, clarity, eloquence or relevance.
Identify the author and the publisher.
Intuition can be useful, but keep these sources handy, in case you need them later.
Note: Follow the next steps for each source, or until you reach your goal.
Excessive quantities of information can be batched in more manageable parts.
3) Filter what you need
To reduce the quantity, first, get rid of irrelevant information or, as some like to call it, non-information overload. Take one step at a time.
You can save time by just adding the good information, if there is less of it.
Then look at the quality of information, sort it according to how suitable it is to the issue at hand, place the fittest first.
4) Structure
Creating the structure will help you keep everything manageable and will facilitate the integration of different sources.
This is a perfect task to be done digitally, in Zaprefy the most effectively.
See "Structure vs. Content" for details.
5) Conflicts
In case of information that is conflicting or is potentially subjective:
- make sure you are not emotionally involved or biased (ask for an opinion from someone who doesn't pose these drawbacks)
- look for potential biases or interests from the author or the publisher
- look for other sources from opposite sides
- if the information doesn't fit, test if what you already have is correct
- consider the time and location and how respective culture influences opinions or interpretations
- try proving or testing where it is possible
- validate the references
- separate facts from interpretation
- see if there was enough information to make the decision in question
