Start With A Win - Staying Focused in the Age of Information Overload

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Americans today encounter up to 10,000 advertisements per day. With limitless information and endless options for distractions at our fingertips, many people experience the negative effects of information overload. Especially for entrepreneurs, too much information can lead to procrastination, decision fatigue, analysis paralysis, and burnout. Since the world will only keep expanding, it is important for business owners to learn coping skills that help them focus in a world where everyone is vying for attention. Adam suggests three tools to assist entrepreneurs in this opportunity for growth:Prioritize the things that need your immediate attention. Think about what actions you can take to grow your business. Then remove anything that may distract you from those tasks. Limit your exposure to irrelevant information. It can be helpful to use apps or other tools for managing your time, setting intentions, and choosing the best sources from which to receive your information.Schedule time to unplug from information and technology. The brain needs time to rest, even during waking hours. Spending time in meditation, nature, engaged in a favorite activity, or being with loved ones resets and refreshes the brain.By being proactive in regards to information input, business leaders take daily, necessary steps to avoid burnout. Building a healthy relationship with our exposure to information is one of the best ways to increase productivity and overall quality of life. Main TopicsInformation overload impacts entrepreneurs (02:45)Consequences of too much information (04:15)“Get your ass to market” (06:40)Overcoming information overload (07:17)Limiting exposure to irrelevant information (10:11)Using research time with intention (15:30)Unplug and allow the brain to rest (16:25)Allowing the subconscious mind to solve problems (18:35)  Episode Linkshttps://www.thesocialdilemma.com Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. You know that part of the song where it goes, I just see us on the beach, you know, you're like riding a wave and it just like takes you off. I love it. Coming to you from Brand Viva Media headquarters. Studio A. Studio A.

That's right. Yeah, we're in Studio A. This is Studio A, yeah. Awesome. Adam Conto, start with a win. And producer Mark. That's right. Hey, how's it going?

It's great. How are you? I'm doing so good. I mean, we've had Carl Mecklenburg on the podcast. We've had just some really, really cool people. You know, we're pushing summertime now. We're pushing springtime. Yeah.

Getting close. I'm ready for spring. I know. Yeah. It's one of those things where it's like typically in Colorado, it snows two, three days later, no snow. It's sunny. You can wear a t-shirt.

Right. But this winter, it's been cold. And then I look at the sidewalk and there's still like lumps of snow, like dirty black snow. So this winter, I've been all over kind of the Western US, Scottsdale, Las Vegas, California, things like that, snowing all over the place. So in March, when we had the REMAX convention, there were people coming from like Palm Springs and there was an inch of snow on the cactus out there. Yeah, it was weird.

And snowed in Vegas. I don't know, it's just been a weird winter. Cold winter. It's been a little overwhelming. You know, sometimes when it's cold, you can kind of hunker down and then not want to do anything. And then you just start consuming all this Facebook, TikTok,

Instagram, Netflix, news articles, YouTube. And then you're like, where do I go? Right. And it's funny you bring that up because I've heard that from a lot of entrepreneurs. This is one of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs have that business leaders have is exactly what you're talking about, which is information overload. Information overload. Overload. I'm overloaded. I'm going to explode. I mean, it makes so much sense because in today's society, we're being bombarded by all these messages. I want to say,

I heard somewhere, and I need to get this fact checked, but it was like back maybe 20, 30 years ago, we were bombarded with so many ads a day, but now it's like, it's like thousands and thousands of ads a day that we're being bombarded with. And then there's just so much easy access to information where it's just like, where do I go? What do I do? So the, how do I overcome this, Adam? The average is about six to 10,000 messages per day. Yes. Unbelievable. Isn't that wild? That is wild. So, I mean, and when you look at what does it do, it makes it so difficult for us to focus

and actually get anything done because especially, you know, if you open TikTok, you're done. Oh yeah. 20, 30, an hour later, you're like, what have I done with my life? Exactly. Yeah, it's fascinating because you look at, OK, there are certain things that run unrestricted in our lives, where actually, you look around the world, other countries, to a great extent, will actually limit what is allowed to show up on those things. So they'll limit the amount of time

you can spend on them. They'll limit the information that's on them. It has to be educational. It has to be pertinent to what they're trying to develop in these people. Granted, it's Big Brother, but it limits your information overload. But we have the freedom to limit ourselves. We can make these choices to limit that and therefore alleviate some of these consequences. And I want to talk about those real quick. Yeah. I'd love to hear, because I do think that, you know, as leaders, the biggest hurdle of productivity is procrastination. Right. And a lot of times we procrastinate by educating, you know, distracting. I don't know.

Is it the same thing? Probably not. But ultimately you look at this, the major consequences of information overload are decision fatigue. You ever feel like you just can't make a decision because there's just so much stuff going in your head and so many people telling me the right way to do things. Yeah, totally. So then you get analysis paralysis where you're stuck. You're locked up because you have too many options or you have too many thoughts going on. And then, of course, all of

this leads to burnout. So have you seen an employee, maybe one of your kids or whatever, who has too much coming at them with their homework, things like that? But at the same time, I will say there's a redeeming factor to all of this. It helps us learn to cope and deal with stress if we understand this. Because ultimately, it's on us to sort through all this garbage that's going into our heads and figure out what are we going to do in order to create progress. It's a growth opportunity. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So this is interesting because it makes me think of this story. You know Sarah Blakely? Spanx? Oh, yeah. So when she started that company, she knew nothing about the clothing, textiles, things like that industry. And she got into this.

And she has this classic story of being overwhelmed and burned out on this stuff. Because she started doing research. And there is such thing as too much. She ended up just getting overwhelmed and overloaded with information. Had to take a step back and learn some focus skills in order to separate all of these different aspects to build this multi-billion dollar company. So it was, she ran in, everybody runs into it. Elon Musk runs into it. It's common, but we just need to understand how to take and make some decision-making opportunities for

ourselves and to make those decisions and then move forward with those and get rid of all the rest of the garbage here. Yeah. Yeah. And I think about that idea of sometimes we never start something because we're always preparing or we're always researching or we're always studying and trying to like, okay, once I have enough information and once I have enough knowledge, then I'll start the thing that I want to start. Right. Exactly. Well, and we try to make things perfect and I'll tell you, done is better than perfect. That's right. Take your ass to market. Right. Done is better. If you listen to everybody's opinion, you'll never get your ass to market. Have I told you

that story? Oh yeah. I love that. And for people that have not heard that, it's an Aesop fable about this guy trying to get a donkey to market to go sell this ass at market. And he keeps running into people along the journey, and they keep telling them different things. You should be leading the donkey. You should be riding on the donkey. You've got this boy. Why isn't he helping you with the donkey? You should be carrying the donkey. And then they eventually drop the donkey into a river because they're overwhelmed, and they're just listening to too many people. And they never get their ass to market. Yeah, decision fatigue.

Whoa. You got that right, buddy. So let's talk about some tips to overcome information overload. So first of all, this is a good one. Yeah, obviously, write down everything you're trying to figure out here. And then prioritize that. Prioritize the decisions you're trying to figure out here and then prioritize that, prioritize the decisions you're trying to make, and then prioritize the sources of information that are coming in for that. And then guess what? Focus on the most important ones. Okay. Yeah, that's super helpful

because I think whenever I write something down, it gets it out of my head onto paper, and then it allows me to kind of almost forget about it or leave it off to the side. Totally. And so I think when you start to write those things down and then analyze those things, see what's most important, and then take action and focus on them, I think that's super helpful. And I've seen this with a lot of big entrepreneurs, big business leaders. I can't remember exactly. Maybe it was Jack Welch or something like that.

They said, write down the top 10 things that you need to do and then put them in order and then take and rip off the bottom seven and throw them away. Okay. I mean, seriously, if you do that and then you end up with the, you've written everything down, you've put them in order of what order needs to be the prioritization here. And don't put the easy ones at the top, by the way. A lot of people, this is a key problem that we have in society today, is we write down all the stuff we need to do. And then we go, ooh, where are the easy ones? I'm going to go do some easy ones first and kind of grease the wheels by doing the easy ones. No, you're going to do the easy ones. You're going to forget about the rest. Put them in order of importance. And then in the top three, then get rid of the rest of them. Just rip them off the page and only have that list of three

and attack the first one. And you'll get it done. Give yourself an hour, something like that. And for a crying out loud, if it takes you more than an hour, at least you have an hour worth of the work done on it. And then come back and schedule another hour for it. But only work on those three. Richard Branson. Richard Branson. I was listening to him speak one day. And the company that hired him to come speak couldn't get him to come speak.

They're like, we want you to come speak for us. His assistant's like, no, he's not going to come speak for you. And they're like, why not? And his assistant said, he only works on three things. And you're not one of them. And they said, well, what are those three things? And his assistant tells them. And one of those three things was a charity that he's trying to raise money for. And they said, okay, tell you what, tell him to come speak and we'll make a massive donation to that charity. He said, done, I'll be there. Oh, wow. Okay. So how do you fit into the three key aspects of whatever you're trying to get done?

What are your three key aspects? What are my three key aspects? What's going to grow your business? That's what it boils down to. Take those three things and get rid of everything else. If it doesn't have to do with it, don't do it. Yeah. I mean, that's a challenge. Yeah. But it makes sense. Totally. All right. So that's the first one. Prioritize your sources of information and focus on the most important tasks with that most important information. The second one, limit your exposure to irrelevant information and distractions. I think we started talking about some social media and things like that.

Now, everybody goes, I'm not on social media. Well, it's not binary. Because are your customers on social media? Maybe you should be there to market to them or to drop things in there. But don't waste your time looking at the information that's on social media. Because the majority of it does you absolutely no good. Go research and spend your time researching and learning, but not just kind of information surfing. Yeah. Because all you're

going to do is find irrelevant stuff that's going to pull you away from what you need to be looking at. Yeah. I think, do you think it's important maybe to schedule time for certain tasks? Like say you do want to just get on social media and, and like catch up, see what's going on. Do you think it's good to let me put some boundaries around that? Say, kind of set some personal goals or restrictions of saying, okay, I'm going to only spend, this is my hour to do social media stuff and schedule that. You're delineating here a difference between working and entertaining. So if you want to go on a social media as your entertainment, let's say you don't watch TV and you're like, I'm just going to go watch TikTok for an hour

instead of watching TV for an hour, schedule it. But stick to your schedule. Because if you don't, you're still going to have information overload. You're going to be distracted. Now, keep in mind also what these things do to your brain. If you sit there and surf social media, if you look at reels or shorts or TikToks or anything like that, your brain is going to be exhausted by the time you're done with this because you're going to be task switching and switching between all these different concepts, ideas, thoughts, stimuli, things like that. how many songs can you listen to in an hour of watching TikTok videos? Yeah. Well, that's the biggest thing, right? Is like all those platforms

are designed to give you that dopamine hit and to keep you on the platform. Like it's, it's, it's almost like they're tricking you or they're manipulating you by continually feeding you that information to kind of keep you sucked in. Yeah. And they're testing it nonstop. They're like, okay, Mark just watched this, this, and this, and he didn't watch these other three things. Ooh, let's feed him back to those other concepts, ideas, the rhythms, the visuals, stuff like that. So they're testing their drugs on you, man. Really, they are. Yeah, no, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. There's nobody out selling sticks of gum on the street corner. No, they're selling crack. Yeah. That documentary, I don't know if you ever watched it,

the social dilemma, it did a good job of kind of explaining how the social media platforms really target you. And they make the social media platform like an actual person, you know, and it's like a group of these guys that are, it's pretty much you. And they say, Oh, like, let's try giving them this and see if it works. And, you know, they're kind of working constantly to, to see what's going to keep you, you know, on the platform and, you know, stimulating your brain constantly. Totally. So what can we do to work around this to an extent is, is really the next question. And the answer is to use tools and apps to manage your information intake and streamline your workflow. So you might have seen Slack or different project management software.

Or even if you just take and make a Google Sheet or notes on your phone. Or how about this? A yellow pad of paper or something like that. Sticky note. And a pen. Yeah, a sticky note. And you say, what am I researching? What are the key points of this? What are the challenges

I'm overcoming? Ask yourself a few questions to help you figure out how am I managing my intake of that information and then summarize it to yourself and then do what you're going to do with it. But don't get lost in the overwhelm of that avalanche of continuous flow. Because here's the reality, you're going to forget what you saw when the next thing comes up. So all you're doing is wasting time. So watch something, take some notes on it, and go, ooh, all right, here's the idea I like out of this. I'm going to look for that idea in the next one. I'm looking for that idea, some supporting evidence of that, or the challenge it overcomes, or the outcome I want to realize for myself or my customers.

Write that down. And separate yourself from the information and process. But use an app or some technology or a CRM or just a Word document or a Pages or a Google Doc, whatever it is, to write down what you're doing and sort through it. What is the topic, the challenge, the outcomes, things like that, and reverse engineer it so that you're not getting lost in, you know, it's like you're jumping in a river trying to catch a fish. You're like, well, wait a second. They're everywhere.

It sounds like you're asking us to be intentional. Whoa. There's that word. Yeah. Because one of the worst feelings, right? Especially when you're in charge of your own schedule and your own boss is when you start doing research aimlessly and you spend the entire day doing this said research and then you've really not accomplished anything. You've just gone in circles. Yeah. And at the end of the day, you're like, what have I accomplished today? Exactly.

And that's just not a good feeling. It's interesting you say that, because typically, businesses or people trying to make some money off of this or what have you, or maybe get better grades, who knows, are doing research. Why do you do research? I mean, you're either doing it to waste time or, who knows, are doing research. Why do you do research? I mean, you're either doing it to waste time or to make money, to accomplish something or make time, by being smarter. But the reality is you don't want to be doing something that is not going to create a positive calculated outcome for you. So let's document what

we're doing here. Let's go down the road of figuring out what do I want to accomplish and how do I accomplish by getting this information and then deploy the information to accomplish that and then move on. We don't look for a closure ever in these different examples. Let's find one and then move on, which takes me to my next point. Also, you have to schedule time away from information. You have to rest and rejuvenate. Turn your brain off. Turn it off, man.

Turn off the phone. Hide the phone from your, you know, put it someplace. Go, you know, we have dogs. I'll sit down on the floor and I'll play with the dogs. And I don't have my phone with me. It's time for my brain to go, ah, okay, relax. Go for a walk outside or get on the treadmill. Of course, a lot of people, they get on a treadmill. They're like, I can do so much work on the treadmill. No, no, no. Try and not do anything for some period of time. Put on some classical music.

Put on meditate. Meditation is a great way of clearing your brain. You're never going to escape information overload if you don't clear that calculator, clear your brain out, and start from scratch again. Yeah. So good diet, good exercise, good sleep. Whoa. Right?

Those three things help rejuvenate your brain. How about good love, good relationships? Yeah. Appreciate the people you're spending time with. I mean, you and I are sitting here looking at each other, having good time together. We're good friends, and we're enjoying this conversation, just kind of unpacking some ideas.

Yeah. It's not about information overload right now. This is work, but it's also not work. We're enjoying the hell out of this. I'm having fun. I look forward to coming here and just spending time with you. And I mean, like you called me yesterday, like, hey, buddy, I have an idea. I'm like, all right, cool. So escape the information overload and find some happiness, build some value, but organize your day so you don't get burned out, get overloaded, get overwhelmed. You don't have all that irrelevant garbage coming into your head because it does no good. There's only so many brain cells that

can fire in there. And what you're doing is you're filling them up with distractions that are not accomplishing anything happy or positive for you. Do you ever feel like sometimes your subconscious can solve problems for you as well? Totally. Like there's a lot of times where I feel like I'll have a problem and I'll need it to be solved and I'll get sucked into researching and doing all these things and this information overload. And then when I pause and kind of remove all that stuff and just give my brain time to solve the problem without even me thinking about it, all of a sudden I'll have this idea or like, oh yes, or this inspiration will come to me of like, oh, this would be a really great idea to do X, Y, and Z. You wouldn't get there if you didn't

give yourself that you know break from consuming all that content you know it's interesting is uh i have these different moments of clarity so one of which is i'm a i'm a fanatic of the ice cold shower okay yeah a lot of people like you're you're kind of strange i mean i do the ice cold shower too. Right at the end, it's like, are you a man? Yeah, you are a man. Two minutes of hell. But then it's like, you feel so like rejuvenated and like ready to like, who needs a cup of coffee after that ice cold shower? But you know, it's interesting. Not only does it like fire up your metabolism, but it clears your brain. And I go sit down, get dressed and ready for the day after that ice cold shower. And my brain's like just hungry to come up with a great idea. And I'll sit down

with my pad of paper and I'm like, whoa, all right, I'm getting some stuff done. So you're right. Find some clarity, reset yourself. And so, so during, um, when I was at the office at Remax, I would take the, uh, Headspace app and I would do like two or three minutes of meditation. And that would, that would clear it out. You know, you, you come out of a meeting, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so info overloaded. And then you sit down and run that thing and listen to the British guy talking your head and some sounds and breathing and stuff like that. And you're like, I'm ready to take on the world now. So you've got to find a way. You have to find a way to remove yourself from the

information overload from so many different distractions and stimuli in the world in order to get things done. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, totally. We all have it. We're in the world right now that, like I said, 6,000 to 10,000 distractions or stimuli per day. Try and count that high. You can't. It doesn't work. You wouldn't last that long. You'd lose track. You'd forget. Totally. But we're getting there. Yeah. Here's the reality.

You need to understand information overload because it's killing you. It is burning you out. It's distracting you. It's making you less effective. You're running at, call it, 25% to 40% of your capacity because there are too many things pulling on you. And you need to separate. You need to take and focus. You need to prioritize. You need to limit your exposure to irrelevance and be conscious of that. Look at things and go, I should not be paying attention

to this right now. No is a very powerful word. And then take these tools, write things down what's going on. And then remember, schedule that time to rejuvenate. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's all awesome stuff. And it's all stuff that I need to be reminded of.

So hopefully anyone who's listening heard this episode and was like, Oh yeah, maybe today when I get home, I just won't turn the TV on and have the news running in the background. I can't tell you the last time I turned it on. Me neither. I'm not a big TV guy. I know. I have three awesome TVs

and they don't get used. We do have family movie night on Fridays, so I like to get the Sonos sound at most digital experience, but that's usually just friday nights no screen no screen sundays no screen during the week you know you know what you're getting one source of information when you're watching a movie that's right just one unless you're one of those movie

watchers with your phone in your hand and i don't think oh no i'm not i like to get sucked in you know there you go live in the moment my friend. Well, hey, thanks so much for just encouraging us today and reminding us what it takes to remove ourselves from being fatigued and overwhelmed as a business leader and how we can be better. I love it. All right. Thanks for starting with a win, Mark. Hey, thank you. Hey, thanks for listening to Start With A Win. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe so you get notified every time a new episode drops. And if you really like this content, please leave us a five-star rating

and a review. If you want more awesome information, head over to adamkontos.com.