Focused - 91: Information Overload

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

David and Mike kick off a new series on overload by examining their own FOMO triggers and make the productivity case for intentionally missing out.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you doing today? I am doing well. How about yourself? I'm very excited. We're about to start something new on the Focus podcast. Yes, I'm excited about this series that we've got. More details on that in a little bit.

But first, let's do some house cleaning. We got some great feedback on the habits episode. It was great to hear from people who were implementing habits and shared some additional resources on the power of habits. And I find that stuff helpful because habits is so simple. Everybody knows what they should be doing in terms of creating good habits and eliminating bad habits. But it seems like you have to kind of have for yourself that moment of clarity and the approach that really works in order for it to stick.

And so there were a lot of things that people shared, which I thought could do that sort of thing. And there was one in particular where somebody kind of took our advice and flipped it around. And that seemed to be working for them. And I thought that was a great use case. So if you are trying to implement habits for yourself, you want some ideas to help make positive changes in your life as we go into 2020, then check out that thread in the focus forum. We'll put a link in the show notes.

Well, explain how you flipped it around. I'm gonna have to pull this up. Basically, we had some advice for planning your day. And I think we said it the night before. Yeah. And they basically said, well, it doesn't work for me. I have to do it the day of. And it was totally different. The way they described it was definitely not what was going to work for me. And that's kind of the point is like everybody has their own thing that's going to work. Yeah. But that was the thing that finally helped it stick for them. And I thought that was really cool. They were able to take our approach and some of our advice and not just stick it in a system and say, this is the

way I've got to do it, but tease out the principles and figure out the mechanics of how those systems work and then apply them for themselves because they've got a regular schedule. Maybe the time to plan your day is 10 o'clock in the morning. That's fine. You figure that out, and then that's the best way to do it for you. Yeah, what's really been helping me is taking on that concept of I'm a person who, you know, trying to adopt that language into my thinking. Like, I'm a person who eats carrots and not cookies. And I've been particularly using it with, you know, what I talked about in the episode about really trying to buckle down on making that daily habit of doing the day plan at the end of

the day. And I'll report that I've been doing pretty good on it. Like the, uh, uh, I've had some real hot projects that are taking a lot of time, but I'm just made the rule. I don't care at about four o'clock, I'm going to stop and do my shutdown routine. And then if I have to resume afterwards, I will. But the habit is starting to take shape. Awesome. That's great to hear. And it's great to hear from other listeners who are making habit changes in their lives.

Kind of in that same thread, we had somebody mention that they had to go back and re-listen to the episode because they got something from it the first time, but they knew that there was more there. And that was kind of the catalyst for all of the changes and figuring out the way that it would work for them. And had an interesting request, at least for our podcast, for transcripts. I know you've had requests for transcripts for Mac Power users, you said previously, and it just was kind of cost prohibitive, and you weren't sure that a lot of people had them. So this is something that is intriguing to me, but I don't want to lose money on this. So I guess I'd like to throw it out there for the listeners and see if you're interested in transcripts. And also, if anybody has any ideas for how we could do this on the cheap, then let us

know in the forum. Yeah, I mean, we've looked into it several times. And to get it done right, it's expensive. And I know at some point, the technology is going to get to a point where you can do them all virtually free. But right now, we're still in that limbo area. So what we'd really like to know is just kind of how many people are actually interested in it. So let us know in the forum and we'll keep track of it. And like Mike said, if you've got a solution we're not aware of, we'd love to hear it. Yeah, I definitely like the idea. I get it that some people process information, audio that works great for them, but other people would prefer to sit down and read it

and i think that would kind of be cool to have like a pdf book of all of the the focused episodes and the transcripts that would be that would be something fun but i've got to figure out if if there's enough interest in it and if it's if it's feasible also thank you to everyone who bought calendars they're still for sale i think but we're really we just wanted to thank you if you bought one i've got mine up on the wall mike i had said I was going to put it on my door, but it got here was so pretty. I put it up so I can see it right from my desk. I I'm looking at my computer right now and the calendar is just to my left and having it there every day is pretty great. Awesome. Yeah. I have mine just to the right of my computer. And I love looking at this thing.

I kind of went nuts marking it up. Maybe we should talk real briefly about how we set up our focused New Year calendars. Yeah, I've got some stuff in here that I use highlighters and ink on that is immovable in my head. And I've got some sticky pad stuff on it as well where I'm a little more flexible. But it's coming along. I've got a field guide production laid out. I've got trips laid out and then like big days here. How about yourself? What are you putting on yours? Well, I have, I'll walk through my whole system here real quickly. I bought a bunch of different fine tip Sharpie type wet erase markers. So I've got a bunch of different colors to choose from.

I bought like a six pack or something. And right at the top of my calendar, I wrote my two big words for the year, which we've talked about on previous episodes, which is rest and relationships. Those I've color coded. So there's those words at the top of the calendar, lines underneath them to help me visually see those at the top. But then at the bottom, there's that key, which I really like. And I've got the different categories of things down there. So I've got rest, which is red things. Those are things that I want to do personally, just fun things. Also, the sabbaticals are on there.

And then relationships. So those are typically blue. And that includes like family vacations, different conferences that I want to go to. I'm taking a trip to visit Joe Bielig. That's on there. Things like that. I've got a personal category, which is things like my kids' birthdays, my 15th wedding anniversary is this year, those types of things. And then I've got another one, which is green, which is all of

the podcast published dates. So Focus is on there, Bookworm is on there, and I just find that helpful. If you were to ask me, what date do we publish in September? I could tell you it's the 1st and the 15th. Yeah, you're gonna have to send me a picture, Mike, because I feel like you're beating me at this. I need to get, I need to up my game a little bit. Well, I don't think there's a right way to do this. But this is just kind of the way that I ended up doing it. And to be honest, I didn't really know that this is what I was going to land on as I started marking this thing up, which made me a little bit nervous. That's kind of why I know people had asked about the dry erase calendars versus the paper calendars.

That's the one negative with using paper is that once it's on there, it's on there. If you're using these dry erase markers, they're not coming off but you know what i i it doesn't really bother me i found actually just like what i like just like i did when i started sketchnoting with pens and i was terrified of making a mistake that once i just started going it really isn't you know it's not perfect there's some things on here where like i had set aside i'm going to go to max stock but i drew the arrow too far. So I intended to stay an extra day. Can't stay that second day after the conference. So, you know, that's a little bit longer, but it's okay. I mean, really the idea behind this is that I'm putting the big

rocks in my 12-month jar to make sure that they happen. Those important things, those important dates aren't going to sneak up on me. And it kind of evolved as I went. And kind of the next question I kept asking myself was, what else is important that I want to make sure is on here? Like, what's non-negotiable, basically? Yeah. So I've got the sabbaticals on there, you know, lots of cool stuff. And it's kind of fun to look at it now and see all the colors.

I think this is really the year I need to like adopt this sabbatical theory. Mike, yeah, I've talked about it enough. I think it's I'm going to put some on my calendar as well. I just need to get through a few things first before I commit to win. But there is definitely going to be a few of those this year. Awesome. Anyway, yeah, the other thing I did I didn't mention is I put a little, draw a little, fill in a little circle every day that I do the proper shutdown at the end of the day. So it was part of that habit formation thing. It's very satisfying after I do it to stand up and draw my calendar a little bit. So it's a little like habit tracking item right on the calendar.

Nice. I thought about doing a bunch of them, but I'm like, no, there's just one thing I really want to work on right now. And maybe if I get that nailed down sometime during the year, I'll change that circle to a square or something and make it for something else. Sure. Yeah. Or use a different color or whatever. There's lots of ways that you could do that. But I know somebody had asked on Twitter, I believe, about how we tracked our habits. And so I'm glad that you touched on that because that's a really powerful way to use this calendar too, I think, is to have that visual chain for the entire year of, hey, look, I've done it six months in a row

where I have journaled at the end of the day or did my shutdown routine, you know, those types of things that can be really motivating so that's a great way to use it and i would also say that you could morph it you know halfway through the year if you have just nailed your shutdown routine now and it's automatic you could even use the same symbol and just use it to mean something else and stack a different habit on top of it or track something else completely so very valid way to use the calendar yeah but i'm liking it, liking it, and it looks beautiful. So that's great. If you are using yours in an interesting way, why not share it in the

forum? We'd love to see it. Yes, absolutely. So what are we up to now, Mike? We've got something new we're going to start. Yes, we had our monthly planning call and we talked about some of the themes and the things that were getting us excited lately. And the big theme was kind of overload and how that applies to different areas of your life. We're going to start today with information overload. with information overload. And I thought that there was a forum topic here by Andrew Pfeiffer, digital minimalism versus all the good podcast course books, articles, etc. That kind of just hits this on the head. So I'm going to share a little bit from this post here. He says at the moment, he's got over 100 podcast subscriptions, he's got over 1,000 URLs saved in a text file, over 100 books that he wants to read, a number of courses that he wants to go through. And so he's got all this stuff basically that he wants to do. And that doesn't include

social media and the email and the things that will pop up that will demand your attention. How do you deal with this sort of thing? And I feel like this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue as there is more and more information out there. It's becoming harder and harder to find the good stuff, or I should say, to know what is the thing that's really going to make a difference for you. And so we kind of want to break this down into some different pieces. for you. And so we kind of want to break this down into some different pieces. We've got a few ideas for how we can deal with this. And like I said, we're going to start today with information. Yeah, I think it's just going in, you have to accept there's more good information out there than you have time for. So just being good isn't enough. And That's what we want to talk about today is how you draw those lines.

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our thanks to blinkist for their support of Focus and all of RelayFM. All right, so the place to start when talking about information overload is probably FOMO. Fear of missing out. Yep, exactly. I've got the definition here,

which I think kind of paints a little bit more heavy picture of what this really is, because everybody talks about FOMO and we kind of throw it around pretty casually, I think. We even joke about it, which we probably shouldn't. Exactly, because the definition is the anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere. Anxiety to me anyways seems like a pretty heavy topic. I dug into this not too long ago and anxiety is becoming a pretty major issue. And I don't want to talk lightly about it if

there are people who really do deal with anxiety because it can be a serious problem. But also, when we apply it to this fear of missing out and information overload and trying to keep up with the firehose of information that is the smartphone in our pocket, all the different streams that are filling our mental buckets, I can't help but think that some of this is self-inflicted. Yeah, I just think in the world today, there's a unique problem, and that is the amount of information we're all getting and the growing acceptance that we can just have it all. I mean, we don't, you know, never in history have humans had the ability to pull something out of their pocket and get all the news, all the social media updates, and just have an infinite stream of that pouring into their brain.

Yeah, the infinity pools is how John Zeratsky put it when we talked to him about his book, Make Time. I think that's a great way to define it because it literally is an inexhaustible pool of information. You can always find something else to read or listen to. And you got to figure out what your triggers are and you got to fight back against it. And I think this is kind of snuck up on us because nobody really thought about that when the iPhone first showed up. Yep.

But, you know, it's starting, people are starting to see the results of it and a lot of them are negative. Yeah. Well, I should say that there was at least one person who saw it because I remember reading in Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism, he talked about, I think it was Tristan Harris, who worked at Google. And he put together that presentation

about the huge responsibility they had to make sure that they were good stewards of their customers' attention. And when he did that presentation, it was received rather well. They created a special position for him at Google, but then he kind of got frustrated that nothing was really happening. And I get it from a business perspective. It's an attention economy. So the longer you can have somebody's eyeballs, then the more money you can make from that sort

of thing. And that just kind of feeds the amount of data that's out there. You know, I think back, I forget the statistic, but at one point it was possible to consume all of the information that existed in the world. It was something like 1900. And there's absolutely no way that you could do that today. And how the thing that's valuable now is customer data, data about the people who are using your product. I remember the early days of the internet in the early 90s when it was starting to take off.

I felt confident that for certain subjects that I was interested in, I had consumed everything on the internet related to them. I mean, I'm not kidding. I internet related to them. You know? I mean, and I'm not kidding. I mean, because there wasn't that much out there. And man, that's not true anymore at all on any subject. I got an email from a listener recently who wanted me to do on Mac Power Users a show on alternatives to RSS. And he said, the reason is RSS doesn't work for me anymore. Every time I open it, there's a thousand articles unread

and it just makes me angry and I don't read any of them. And the problem isn't RSS. The problem is he has too many feeds. And that is, I think, the problem we all face is there's so many feeds. Yeah, there's so much stuff out there, especially stuff that we want to read or we want to listen to, like Andrew's post about all of the books that he

wants to read, for example, and all the podcasts that he's subscribed to. At some point, though, you got to be realistic about this is what I've realistically got to work with. And if something isn't going to fit in there, then I've got to say no to those things. I think it helps, though, to know what are the things that tend to appeal to you that you would just add to a list somewhere. You know, what are your FOMO triggers? And I've got a couple that I'm willing to share here. Number one would be self-help books. So like Andrew, I've got a lot of books that I want to read. As I thought about this though, and as I kept buying books that I wasn't reading, I knew I needed a different way to approach this if I

really wanted to read. You know, having a hundred books that you want to read is not the same as actually reading even a dozen books a year. Turns out you actually have to do the work. So I found that there were really three types of books that got added to my list as I kind of morphed and created a system with Joe Buleg where we now, for a podcast, we read a book every two weeks. So building in the accountability, that kind of helped me to do this. But still, there's three buckets basically that these land in. There's books that I have to read for Bookworm. There are books that solve a problem that I am experiencing currently. And there are books that I really want to read. And if they check just one of those boxes, there's a pretty good chance, except for Bookworm,

because that's going to get published, that I will buy the book. It'll go on a list. It'll go on my bookshelf, but I may never look at it. It occurred to me that by identifying those buckets, I was able to see that the best books, the ones that I was more likely to follow through with, were the ones that hit all three of these. If I can do it for Bookworm, that's great. And if it solves a problem that I have, even better. And if it's something that

looks interesting and I really want to read it, then that's kind of the holy grail. Yeah, you know, it's funny because the way I handle this information overload, because like you, I'm interested in these subjects. I think there's a lot of smart people writing about this stuff and a few dumb ones. But what I do is I listen to bookworm. That's become my FOMO filter, right? And I have like if you guys really like something and it sounds like it's on target for me,

then I will go on and read the book, but I use you guys as my initial filter. Nice. It's usually books that you've both rated well, and they sound like they solve a problem I'm dealing with. And that's how they get through. I don't read as many books as you do, but I do read the ones that kind of make it through that filter. Yeah, I'm glad we can save you some time from reading bad books. Yeah.

The other one that I recognize i deal with is apple technology uh so this is interesting though because i'm also executive editor at the the suite setup so in some form this is my job right yeah and i recognized uh as i was thinking back about the episode we did with mike and he talked about his jobbies that i have totally made apple technology a jobby for me. And I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. Because on the one hand, I do like, I do like this stuff. And it is nice to say, well, I got to do this for work, you know. So specifically, like email apps, as an example, I have a love hate relationship with with email. And I like to go look at all of the new email apps that are out there to see if they have solved this problem any better. And so far,

I haven't found anything that has. But also, I've noticed that because this is now a jobby, that I have to do these things. I don't have the luxury of saying, you know, I don't feel like looking at those anymore because there are readers who expect me to have thought this through and have an opinion on this and help them find the best thing that solves a problem that they're dealing with. So there's that expectation. And then also there are things that maybe aren't something that I'm going to write about or expected to have a quote-unquote professional opinion on, but they're still just interesting to me. I've recognized that I chase the new and shiny just

like everybody else. And kind of the thing that needs to bring me back that keeps me centered is this mantra of create, not consume. I've talked about this and how this is something that we want to teach our kids. So it's like a rallying cry or a mission statement almost for our family on like the right way, what we consider to be the right way to use these technologies. And I've even got on my iPad Pro, I've got the smart keyboard cover and I've got a big ConvertKit Create Everyday sticker on the back of it. So every time I pick that up, I'm reminded that this is a device for creating, not just consuming, scrolling through Twitter and email, watching YouTube videos, that sort of thing. Yeah.

And I've found that just being mindful of that and, hey, by the way, you said you wanted to create, not consume. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess that's enough to keep me from chasing the rabbits and wasting a bunch of time on my device doing things that I didn't really intend to do. But I can totally see a situation where maybe you need a little bit more structure than that. As silly as it sounds, I have a Keyboard Maestro script that puts up something inspirational for me that shows up every morning when I log in.

And it just sets me straight a little bit. It's related to creation, but it's got some bad words in it. So I shouldn't say it. The just like your FOMO trigger being Apple tech and email apps, I would say one of mine is productivity apps in general, just productivity. I don't read every book about productivity, but I seem to try out every app related to productivity. And part of it is my job. You know, I talk about it so much on the Mac Power Users. I write about it at Mac Sparky, and I want to be kind of in that space and checking things out.

But I can take it too far on occasion. And I do have to be conscious of at what point am I doing this as research and what point am I doing this as a way to avoid doing the work? And that's something that I, that's a FOMO trigger for me. Don't really have the answer to it yet because it like, like you said, it's something that,

that I need to be doing for the way I pay for my shoes, but, but also I can take it too far. Another one for me historically has been news. And that's been a real problem lately because news in the United States has become increasingly, I guess, for lack of a better word, partisan and less news, you know, so I can talk later about how I'm dealing with that. And then, of course, I think a big topic for today's entertainment FOMO, you know, you know, every time you talk to a friend, Hey, have you seen

the latest, whatever, you know, insert the word here. And, um, that is something that I am subject to just like everyone else. Um, and, and one last one that I thought was kind of interesting FOMO, because this, I don't know if this is going to come out right, but for me there, I get a certain degree of FOMO with family events. And I know the whole point of this is to spend as much time as my family with, I want as I can,

but like, like I'm on a deadline for a big project right now. And last night my daughter and my wife decided to go to target to do some shopping you know and there was a part of me is like oh they're going i would like to go with them and hang out with them for you know half half hour you know why not right i'm like oh wait a second i actually have work i have to do but it's like everything my family does i just want to be a part of it it's very hard for me to say no to that stuff. And, you know, if I look at myself, honestly, that is a bit of FOMO. Yeah, I completely agree. And I deal with the same thing, though. One thing that has helped me with that is scheduling the scheduling, the time that I want to spend with my family ahead of time. So as an example,

if my family was going to go do something and I, spur of the moment, wanted to go with them, I would feel the FOMO that you just described. If I had something that I had to do and if it just happens to pop up during my workday, that's going to be my default. But it's easier to say, you guys go ahead. When I know that on Friday, for example, I've got a one-on-one coming with one of my kids. And in the morning, we're going to go to the coffee shop and I'll get coffee, they'll get hot chocolate, and we'll play a game and just talk. coffee, they'll get hot chocolate and we'll play a game and just talk. Without that on the calendar, though, it's hard to stay and do what you know you need to do. And the part of that also is, you know, we talked about this earlier that we say yes to too many things. And so the work that

you have to do, maybe it's not essential to your job, but it's that one extra thing that past you said yes to and current you is kicking in for it. Yeah, yeah. It is a kind of a weird trigger, but nonetheless, it can exist. And, you know, I think the default is to join in, but not always. And you got to draw those lines if you want to keep the lights on. Yep. You and I have been working on this outline for a couple of weeks. The interesting thing to me is neither one of us wrote down social media as a FOMO trigger. And, and that is something I think we should address. I think for a lot of people that very much is a FOMO trigger. Uh, we had a relative come stay with us recently and she it was i couldn't get over how

often that person was on facebook just i mean i've because we just don't do it in our house that way and yeah i just it was uh it was it was pavlovian how much she was using facebook and and i i really was i was at first it was kind of funny to me. And afterwards, it became kind of concerning. You know, it just is crazy. So I think that is that's the ultimate FOMO tool. Yeah, I have seen the same thing with Facebook specifically, and kind of my social media strategy, which is why this is not really on my list, is to eliminate all of it except for Twitter. And I've got screen time open right now. I spend on average 23 minutes a day on Twitter, which is acceptable to me. So I think I get more value from my Twitter usage than the 23 minutes that I invest in it. But if that was an hour and 23

minutes, I would have to answer the tough question of what am I not able to do because I'm spending an extra hour a day, five hours a week, actually seven hours a week, you know, on this social media instead. And, you know, I've been there and i've i've gone through that process it's difficult but when you keep kicking something down the road is like i want to do this thing sometime and then you look at how you are actually spending your time and you realize that i am my own worst enemy when it comes to the completion of this thing that uh is is pretty sobering yeah it's the funny thing for me is my social media problem is that I don't do enough of it.

I've got, I'm serious. I mean, I get busy with things and days will go by without me opening Twitter. And we've got this great forum for Mac Power users and focused and I will go days without checking in on it. And these are things that I actually want to participate in. But I just forget to because I get busy with all the other stuff I'm doing. And I've recently taken steps to make sure that I get into them more often. So I've got the exact opposite problem.

But the but you know, I get it. And I do think that for a lot of people, social media and I'm not judging. I mean, I think we all have our things we like to do. But social media. We've all got our vices. Yeah, exactly. Social media can be one for folks. And we hadn't mentioned this. I wanted to add that to the list of triggers.

Yep, definitely. Fundamentally, for me, this all stems kind of from the church of busy and expectations we put on ourselves that we need to do it all, read it all, see it all. We just can't accept that anymore. I mean, I think that's one of the underlying themes of this whole overload series we're going to do is we have to change our defaults. Yep. Changing defaults is the most powerful thing that you can do. When you change your defaults, really what you're doing is you're changing your habits. And I forget who said it, but I really like the quote that goes, first you make your habits and then your habits make you. So if you're dissatisfied with the current state of things, then you want to change the things that have gotten you to this place.

And likewise, if you are not dissatisfied with where you're at, but you want to do better, we're going to kind of get into that in the next section. That's a possibility too. You got to kind of figure out what are the things that you can do repeatedly that are going to get you there. And ultimately, like you mentioned at the very beginning, it comes back to your identity. But not to rehash the entire habits episode. Because I do think that related to this, especially when it comes to the idea of creating the life you want to live or having an ideal future, however you want to define it, is a cousin to FOMO, which is FOBO, a fear of a better option. And I've dealt

with this myself, where you keep looking for the next thing, you're looking for something that's a little bit better. And that could be, maybe you want a little bit better job, or maybe you want a little bit more autonomy in your workday. Or maybe you want a new productivity app that's going to magically fix all of your focus and capture and getting things done problems. You know, I think that that's a big reason why that's such a popular category is that people tend to be overwhelmed with the way things are. They wish things were different. And they think that if I get the right app or I get the right system, then that's going to make it click. I remember when I first discovered getting things done, I was like, where have you been all of my life? You know, that's kind of what people are expecting from

stuff. Yeah, agreed. And also, I think another good example of that is shopping. You know, if there's something you need to buy in your life, you could spend a week researching it. The internet will give you as much data as you will take. Fountain pens as a completely hypothetical example. Or you could find a trusted source, a friend or something like Wirecutter and just go say, okay, that's good enough. And you know what? Saying that's good enough doesn't feel that good, right? But quite often it's the best thing you can do. Yeah. And really the thing that has been hitting me lately with this fear of a better option thing,

as I've been thinking about this, is that when you are constantly looking for something better, you miss out on what is. And this hits me as a parent, because I know that at some point, probably when they are about 18, my kids are no longer going to be at home with me. And I can't say, well, I'm just going to do this now and then things will get easier down the road because down the road may come by the time they have left the house and I've missed the opportunity to spend the time with them. I don't want to do that. So it's this balancing act of trying to sew for the future, but also take advantage of the gift that is the present.

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but now I want to get to the good part, JOMO. The joy of missing out. Yep. So JOMO, or the joy of missing out, is a feeling of contentment with one's own pursuits and activities without worrying over the possibility of missing out on what others may be doing. This sounds like the place you want to be, right?

Yeah, you should have FOMO for JOMO, really. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And really, the thing that derails JOMO is this idea, which I put a couple terms here in the outline, but there's this constant battle going on with contentment versus complacent versus contempt. And I heard somebody say, really the root of this for me, I heard somebody say one time that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. So when you're applying this to your own situation, the positive version of this would be contentment, where you're happy with the way that things are. The hateful, negative version of this would be that you are dissatisfied with things the way that they are. And the complacent, the indifferent version of this is that you just refuse to do any work to change anything because it is what it is. You don't care how things are.

Exactly. And as I reflect on this, I recognize that I have been in all three of these places. As we all have. Yeah, and I'm kind of curious to get your perspective on this because I think that depending on your situation, any one of these may be the appropriate response. any one of these may be the appropriate response. If you are in a negative situation, you can be dissatisfied with the way things are. And you can work really hard to improve your situation. There's lots of stories, the rags to riches types of things, you know. But what occurs to me as I study those, because there was one recently on Michael Jordan, he can't let go.

At least this was the article I saw on ESPN, and it was kind of highlighted by his Hall of Fame introduction speech. He kept bringing up all of the people who had done him wrong. It's like he kept this running list of grudges that he was holding, and he just had to prove them wrong. And he's old enough now, he's in the Hall of Fame where you get to the point where, okay, so what's the next thing you're going to prove somebody wrong about? At some point, you got to let that go and you got to be content with what you've

achieved. And I think it's hard maybe to identify when you need to switch the gear. Obviously, I think the ideal state is that you are in a good situation and you're content with the way things are. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack with this. Because I've done mindfulness meditation for so long, I feel like the mindfulness muscle is a very good one for kind of addressing what you're thinking with respect to something. You know, like, for instance, let's just take my recent challenge with trying to get the daily, you know, review done and getting it planned. I was not, you know, content with what was going on, you know. But at the same time, I'm not sure you would call that feeling negative or indifferent. It was more of like a need that needed to be satisfied.

So I was trying just to be mindful about, you know, what would help me and why I wasn't doing it. So I try to be more analytical about it than emotional. But there's emotion involved. I don't know. I'm rambling a little bit. This is hard, kind of figuring out your motivations on these problems and then applying it to information overload. I think it's very easy to get lost with the motivation.

Yes, completely agree. I guess the thing, the takeaway for me as I reflect on this is that the contempt, being dissatisfied with the way things are, that can be fiercely motivating in the short term, but it's not sustainable in the long term. At least it's not healthy in the long term. And so what I want to do is I want to be content and thankful for the good things that are in my life. And then when I see something that I want to fix, I'm not upset that it's there, but I'm going to look at it through the lens of a systems mindset. And I'm going to ask, what are the things that are producing this result that is dissatisfactory to me? And what can I change to produce a better result? That's, again,

what habits are all about. But the big thing for me, the thing I know I need to continue to get better at is to fight for contentment. Yeah, you know, I was thinking as you were saying that, you know, it's like your body, when there's something wrong with your body, you get pain. And the pain isn't there for just to be painful. It's actually there to send you a message that, hey, there's something wrong. But that's thinking about things as like pain as a trigger to say, okay, well, what can I do to get rid of that contempt? It shouldn't be something you should be comfortable with or want to stick around. It should be something you should be working to get rid of, just like pain. Yeah. And the pain maybe is the result of trying to keep up with all of the things. Yeah.

Even if they're good, even if they promise to make things easier, if they're just adding another number in the red unread badge that's showing up on your home screen and every time you look at it, it's producing anxiety, then it's not worth it. You got to be okay with the things that you can get to and let go of the things that you can't. Yeah. I don't think it's our Jomo is our, our, our default nature, you know, because we, we've, uh, you know, humans have evolved to want information. It's what keeps the saber tooth tiger from eating us. Um, but, um, I think this is something, if you want to deal with information overload, something you have to take on head on

and something you need to try and foster in yourself is, is Jomo. Um, uh, I'd like to make the productivity case for missing out. Uh, I think maybe that'll help people. Um, uh, to me, uh, I have, I'm definitely a violator of this one of the reasons we're doing this whole episode on overload is i am the poster child for overload um but but the but you know i have also witnessed in myself that when i do the right thing when i make time and when i when i start you know cutting the out, that's when I do some of my best work. I believe that space allows for creation. Yes, I completely agree. And you have to ask yourself, what is the important thing for you and I both? It's probably creating. And so a feeling

of contentment with our own pursuits and activities requires creating. So then the question is, what's preventing me from feeling that contentment with my own pursuits and activities? What's the thing that's standing between me and Jomo? And if it's information that is keeping me from creating, it's not worth it. Yeah. And if you try this and you experience it, it makes it a lot easier to embrace Jomo. Once you realize, oh, wait, the fact that I didn't have anything to do for the whole weekend and I ended up with all these great ideas, you know, oh, maybe this really works. So I think that's something you really need to be aiming for. And that can help you with jomo the other thing is humble brags i love humble brags related to jomo i mean just the other day someone's like oh man i can't i think i need to watch breaking bad again and i'm like i've never watched breaking bad you know i have no idea what it's about i mean i kind of know what it's about because i keep hearing about it and it doesn't sound to me like something that i want to pour into my brain i'm sure it's good media so don't get mad at me but i'm just not going to do it. You know? And, uh, same thing. I had some friends over and they were talking about the

next Marvel movie. I'm like, I have no idea what was going on with Marvel movies, you know? So, so, and I'll talk later about how I've kind of, I still have media that I'm interested in, but I, I've really slimmed it down a lot. And, uh, now I'm to the point where I kind of like enjoy being in the dark about certain things because in my head, at least, it means that I'm putting time in other things that are more important to me. Exactly. It doesn't, JOMO doesn't mean that you live in a cave and you don't watch TV and you don't spend any time on social media.

It's just that you're careful about curating the things that are really important to you, the things that do bring you joy. I also know nothing about Breaking Bad and I know nothing about Marvel movies, but I did watch The Mandalorian with my kids and we loved it. It was time spent together, you know, and that was a shared experience that I consider a net positive. So pick the things that are important to you, but just recognize that you can't do them all. Pick the ones that really bring you joy, and you'll get more joy out of them. Yeah, agreed. And that is something that if we could all just take a few steps. I mean, it's so rewarding and it's so immediately obvious when you do that,

that it's much easier to keep doing it. So if this is something you're thinking about, pick something right now that you can cut out and make some room for the good stuff. Completely agree. This episode of Focus is brought to you by ExpressVPN. We all know how VPN protects your privacy and security online, but did you know it can take your TV watching to the next level? By unlocking movies and shows that are available in other countries, that means you can use ExpressVPN to binge on Doctor Who or Star Trek on the UK Netflix. It's really simple. Just fire up ExpressVPN and change your location to the UK, then refresh Netflix, and that's it.

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slash focus. F-O-C-U-S-E-D. are thanks to ExpressVPN and their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. So we kind of hit on this before the break, but there really is one specific strategy that I would encourage people to do. I know you've got a couple things that you've listed here too, David, but the place to start, I think, with this is Cal Newport's idea of the digital declutter and identifying what are the inputs that are adding to the feeling of overwhelm in terms of the amount of information that you're trying to keep up with. And this is kind of a scary idea. Cal Newport talks about eliminating all optional technologies for 30 days. And I have to admit that I haven't gone completely in with this digital decluttering. But I really think there's power in it. And sometimes it can be motivating to do it with a bunch of other people. So I have a link here to something that Isaac Smith put together at the Focus Course. There's a 30-day digital declutter that he's leading.

So if you want to learn more about it and maybe do a digital declutter with some other folks, then check out that link in the show notes. Yeah, I think Cal Newport is really one of my favorite authors. I guess I would amend my statement earlier about how I decide what books to read. It's stuff that you like over on the Bookworm podcast or anything Cal Newport writes, basically. I just like his voice and he really speaks to me with the problems he's trying to solve. But anyway, yeah, Digital Minimalism is an excellent resource for this. I think it came out, was it 2019 that book came out? Yeah, that's his most recent one.

And it's a good read, no matter how you consume it. Yeah, Cal, if you're listening, we'd love to have you on the show. Anyway, talking about this problem, we both face it as well, just like everybody else. I thought it'd be fun to talk about some ways that we're dealing with it and ways we want to get better at it. Yeah, definitely. So for me, as I was thinking about this, the word that came to mind was pruning, which literally means to cut or to lop off. or to lop off. So I mentioned that I don't spend a ton of time on Twitter, but I do think that an action step for me, something that I want to follow up with, so you can hold me accountable to this, is I want to go through the number of accounts that I follow on Twitter and I want to clean

them up. Because I recognize that when I have too many things that I'm trying to follow, I feel compelled to go in there more often. And as I'm scrolling through the feeds, which are already curated, so they're things that are important to me, I recognize that there's a number of people that I follow who produce a large amount of the information that I have to process. And a lot of it is very similar. A lot of them will link to the same things. So I want to figure out what are the key, specifically with Apple technology, what are the key accounts that I want to follow and unfollow a bunch of other ones? What are the ones that really talk about the things that i i want to make sure that i i see

they don't miss miss anything but then uh what are the ones that really are just kind of like a a me too and that i think is different for every person so figuring out what what's the if i had to pick one basically what would it be yeah and i want to take the same approach with my rss i've got a bunch of things that i've like like the my RSS. I've got a bunch of things that I've, like the reader who emailed you, I've got a bunch of things in there that I haven't gone through it in a long time, and I know that there's a bunch of stuff

that I'm never going to read, but it's just adding to the unread count, and it's producing that anxiety. So I want to get that to the point where it's much more manageable, and also every time I go in there, I see the things that I want to see. Yeah, it's like, to address RSS directly time I go in there, I see the things that I want to see.

Yeah, it's like to address RSS directly, I think a mistake a lot of people make is, let's say they like Apple News or International News or whatever, and they subscribe to two or three different or more news services that cover that beat. And the problem is your RSS gets filled with five articles about the same thing for every subject. Yep. And the problem is your RSS gets filled with five articles about the same thing for every subject. Yep. And what you do, just kind of like you were talking about on Twitter,

is find the one that you like and trust and unsubscribe from all others and just accept that you're going to get almost everything. They may miss one or two once in a while, and that's okay. Yep. The hard one for me is the next one on this list, which is pruning my podcast feeds. Because I use Overcast for my podcast listening. And I have an all episodes playlist and then a priority playlist. Typically, I will go through the priority playlist. And then when I run out of things in the priority playlist, I'll switch to the other, the full feed. And I've recognized recently that I never get to the end of the priority playlist anymore, which is a red

flag. It means that I've got too many things that I'm trying to keep up with. And since I can't keep up with them, even if I speed up the playback, then something's got to go. And I'm not looking forward to doing that one, because I really enjoy all of the shows that are on that list. But I'm committing right now, something is going to be cut, and probably more than one. Like something I did with that, because i'm actually pretty careful about what i listen to in podcasts but i've got a couple that are fire hoses audio dharma is a good one that's a fire hose they put out like two or three episodes a week so um i put in the uh the podcast settings that after like two weeks that just remove it if i don't listen to it and and that way you know i just get it when I can.

The other thing I do with podcasts, which is kind of interesting, is I have them tied to shortcuts. So if I want to listen to a technology podcast, I push a button. If I want to listen to spiritual one, I'll push a different button. So I can push a button and a type, you know, something of that genre will play through my ear and i don't really look in the app that much to see how many shows there are and how much there is and i guess i'm jomo there because i'm okay with it you know hey that's cool i'm listening to this this is fun i may have missed entire episodes i don't care yeah i guess I'm more of a podcast completionist than you are. There's so many shows that, especially by people that I really like, that I want to know what's going on in their

world, that podcast is a way for me to do that. But I can't keep up with them all. Well, then you're going to get rid of some of the ones that you don't love, because the only way you can be a completionist is to is to is to pare it down exactly exactly uh the other thing that i noticed here pertains to pruning is that uh despite my best efforts i occasionally will get a notification on either my phone or my watch and be upset that i paid attention and looked at the thing and saw that it was not something I really wanted to see. And I just need to go back through all of the things that I have enabled notifications for. My default has been no, but apparently I've been a little bit

lax when I install a new app or something and the screen pops up. It says you want to allow notifications because they throw it at you right away. I think a lot of times I install an app with the intention of seeing what it's going to do for me. So in that case, I always feel a little bit apprehensive about hitting allow, but it turns out that I've hit it more often than I've realized. And so every time I get one of those notifications and it's not something that's important at the moment, I get mad at myself. And as I'm going through prepping for this podcast, I recognize that I need to prune my notifications as well. You know, Mike, I feel like all the things you've talked about, Twitter, RSS, podcast fees, notifications, that's all things that could benefit from mindfulness at the moment. that's all things that could benefit from mindfulness at the moment.

You know, like when a notification shows up, the iPhone and iPad have a very easy way to turn that off. If you just swipe the notification, that's a recent addition. You don't have to go into settings anymore. So just being aware as they come in and say, oh, I don't want this to happen again, you know, or when you open Twitter and you see some person that's going off on a rant about something you don't care about that you follow, you're like, well, you know what, maybe I don't need to follow that person anymore. Same thing with podcasts and RSS feeds. I think, you know, attention at the moment would be a great way to get those down to

the things that are really important to you. It makes a lot of sense. It requires that mindset of the what's the source of this thing. It's always easier, it feels anyways, mentally to just dismiss the thing. But I do like your advice and that approach of why am I getting this in the first place? And if you're not okay with it, removing it as a source. That is my, for whatever reason, that is my default behavior. I mean, I am constantly, when I get notifications, when something comes across my screen, my first thought is, you know, why is this here? And do I ever want to see something like it again? And I am very aggressive about getting rid of stuff that I don't need to see again. So I'm good at this part of the

information overload, but I do have some, some failings I want to talk about. Um, I'll tell you though, the one for me is, and something I really want to work on is the compulsion to pour information into my head in downtime. Um, and so I, while I'm good with notifications and i'm good with my rss feed why is it that if i'm standing in line at a grocery store i can't just stand in line in a grocery store why do i have to pull my phone out and and pour information in my head why you know at night when i'm laying in bed when i should be shutting down you, physically, do I feel the need to pour pixels into my eyeballs? You know, so I feel like information overload hits me in weird spots. And I want to I think I want to change that default.

I want it to be I look at this thing when I intend to look at this thing and not when I just happen to look at this thing. And that's a problem I would like to work on. All right. Anything else that you want to share regarding your own struggles with information overload? Yeah, well, this is something that I've been aware of for some time with me. So I've actually kind of gone down the road a little bit. I wanted to talk about some of the stuff we've done around here to get better at it. Fundamentally, I try to make media and news consumption a conscious choice, not something I just do. I was talking earlier, you know,

I was a political science major in college. I, you know, I'm interested in current events. And I was finding that with the way the news works now, you can, that is an infinity bucket of the worst kind. So my wife and I were talking about, well, how do we stay up with the news, but how do we, um, you know, avoid getting lost in the news. And we found, um, and I don't, you know, don't, don't get political with me in email. I don't want to hear about it, but the we found an app called Reuters, the Reuters news service on the Apple TV. It has, you can download it and it can give you, I think it's a five, 15 or 30 minute version of

the news. And we watch that once a day, usually the 15 minute version, you know, after dinner and, uh, you know, you get a decent update about what's going on in the world without having to hear all the commentary on it. And I like, and we, so we put constraints around it and I find that very useful. I like that. The only way it would be better is if they had a negativity filter. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? They, they do a pretty good job of not you know well anyway i i feel like we're we're just too close to the the live wire here but you know so so changing your default for news and media sources should uh not be you know should i keep this it should say you know what's a really good reason to have this you know and if i don't have

a really good reason it's kind of like the whole minimalism look, you only keep the stuff that sparks joy, right? When faced with a decision to take on something or consume something or try something, I try to ask myself, you know, why am I doing this, you know, deal with the why, and be willing to judge your motivations, You know, many of my information overload mistakes are attributable to bad wise. You know, quite often I pick up independent sources of information and go down some rabbit hole

because I don't want to do my work or because I'm feeling frustrated or not sure what I'm supposed to do next. So I just drop myself into an infinity bucket to drown my sorrows and asking myself why may get me to avoid that and get back on track. Sure. I like that. You know, like I said earlier, danger areas for me are, I've got some danger areas like bedtime and long waits. I heard a Zen teacher talk about once he decided to spend a year intentionally getting in the longest lines wherever he went. And he said he just wanted to

stop feeling like he had to be the quickest and the fastest. And the anxiety that comes with that, I was just the other day, we took some friends at Disneyland and they had never been there. And I was really looking forward to sharing this with them. And we got in line to give them our tickets and the line next to us was moving faster. And I was feeling anxious because I wanted them to get in there. So I wanted to get them in there right away. And whoever was in our line was going really slow, and it was really getting me anxious. And I got thinking, what's wrong with me? I'm at Disneyland with some dear friends, and here I am frustrated over the speed of the line. So I think that's the kind of stuff that gets us in trouble. And it also, I think, helps to keep your eye on the ball. It doesn't really apply to this episode,

but moving the needle, know tracking stuff like that and and seeing how you're doing can be a nice way to compare you know how much time you really have for this stuff yeah one thing that you mentioned with your Disneyland story that really got me thinking is the fact that you're experiencing the anxiety in the line and you're asking yourself why I have all of these things that should be contributing to joy and instead I'm feeling anxiety. So how do you switch from FOMO to JOMO? I think I mentioned this, but I didn't really dive into it. The way that that works for me and helps me to focus on contentment is expressing gratitude. And this is something

that I want to continue to get better at. I do it already as part of my normal shutdown routine. I ask myself with my journaling prompts, what's something that I'm grateful for? But I do recognize that I have a lot of room for improvement in finding that contentment and the joy in the things that are going right, because we tend to focus on the things that are just the things that are going wrong. being able to not change the situation in the moment, but change the way that I look at the situation. That for me is enough to make the switch from FOMO to JOMO. And then pruning the information sources, obviously that helps me bring something that brings me joy in front of my face more consistently. By keeping those feeds small, I'm able to eliminate the anxiety that is associated with having to go through all of the things. But that's the thing I really want to leave people with is think about your own situation and your own mental triggers and whether they are triggers for FOMO or for JOMO and how

can you produce more of the latter. Yeah. And I guess just to add to it, I kind of said it earlier, but maybe I need to make it clear for me. The way I handle that moment is just stop, take a breath and think about, you know, why am I feeling this right now?

And usually once you give it any introspection, it goes away. Yeah, it's a magic, you know, magic cure. You realize how stupid it is and then you you move on that's what i did when i was in line but the uh but you know we're all subject to this stuff and can i say we're just barely evolved monkeys we're working on it all right well uh i we have a whole series on Overload planned. We're still going to have some guests,

so this is going to take a while to get through it. But we wanted to start with something that we're all struggling with, and that's information overload. We hope that we were able to help you out a little bit today. There is an excellent forum for the Focus podcast that you can find over at talk.powerusers.com. And we encourage you to go share your information over remote stories and cures

and struggles with the listeners. It's really great seeing people weigh in there. And we will be doing this as an ongoing bit here as we go through the series. So I want to get some feedback from listeners and we want to hear from you. Thank you to our sponsors, Blinkist, Ahrefs, and ExpressVPN. We are the Focus Podcast.

You can find us over in relay.fm.focus. And we'll see you next time.