By Cathy-Anne O’Brien Reading books, magazines and newspapers on your iPad or Kindle has made the written word more accessible than ever, and information consumption has soared. Our reading habits of today would be the envy of any ancient philosopher or academic. Or would it?
What are we reading? We know more about our friends than we ever dreamed of –what they did Friday night; what their kids wore the first day of school; the sports celebrity who dropped an F-bomb; how aspartame is the real enemy. What is this wealth of knowledge doing to our brains?
For starters, I think we’ve become better at sorting through the clutter. When we have a million messages coming at us all the time, we become really good at picking what interests us and dismissing the rest. That could be a good thing, but it means our brains are on overdrive.
Reading used to be the perfect way to unwind at the end of the day. It soothes, it captivates – we can get lost in a book for hours. That relaxing pastime is now competing with Google, Twitter, Facebook or, the latest, my favourite, the Next Issue app where you have hundreds of magazines at your fingertips. We can’t possibly absorb it all – and many of us feel a sense of guilt when we haven’t caught-up on all our media.
What are we not doing because we are scanning the headlines and social media posts? Albert Einstein expressed his concern around too much reading saying, “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
There’s no doubt that digital clutter is eroding our ability to focus and perform creative tasks. Our email is no longer just a way to send and receive messages. It has become our to-do list, filing system, calendar, address book and bookmarks list – and most people put in a full days work on email alone.
We compensate by multitasking, yet research shows it’s not making us anymore productive. It’s causing us to be overwhelmed and unfocused and under perform on all our tasks.
We need to figure out a way to manage the information consumption in our lives so we can concentrate on what’s important to us. We need to de-clutter our brains and re-learn how to be fully in the moment.
Hello delete button. The goal is to achieve emptiness. Like in yoga practice, clearing the mind allows you to start anew. It fosters creativity, compassion and calmness. Let’s take a lesson from the minimalists and free ourselves from the control our information technology has over us. Afterall, what’s the risk? Afraid you’ll have too much time on your hands?
