[Riffs] Some Thoughts On: Info-Overload, Option-Paralysis, and Digital Chaos.
Note: This Riff (article) was originally posted to our sadly now-defunct website (RIP) on Sept 6th, 2024. Check out my thoughts on engaging a bit more with the whole digital minimalism shtick. If you like the content of this article, keep in touch as I/we have a whole TON more similar content incoming!
Peace, Love and Grindcore xoxo - Brady
Author: Brady
(NB - where you see two asterisks as **- keep that in mind as me flagging the concept/s for a potential future Riff or even full episode. This disclaimer will be laughably ironic for you by the end of this article!)
Being diagnosed auDHD (peer moniker for combined ADHD and ASD**) leads me to be completely unsurprised about the concept of 'analysis-paralysis', a.k.a. option-paralysis. Research indicates folks with both conditions as a singular neurotype are more prone to this than most**.
I'll find my brain veritably exploding with an almost unlimited number of ideas, thoughts, cascading and thought-disordered tangential spirals. All day, every day. It is, in fact, often pathological. It can detract my immediate and ongoing attention, obfuscate KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) into KINCI (Keep It Needlessly Complicated, Idiot - just made that up then (patent pending)) very quickly, and derail everything from simple self-care tasks to higher-order planning, task management, prioritisation etc**.
In my weaker moments, of which I tend to have many lately, I'll opt to fall prey to the ensuing dysregulation, helplessness and choice-fatigue.
*hits rake* 'yeeeeehuugggghhhhheery' [repeat].
But y'know what? There's a lot I share universally with you all, irrespective of diagnosis. And that's an increased rate of option-paralysis, decision-fatigue and exhaustion.
Dear Reader, I've been quite transparent about how busy things are in my personal and professional life.
For instance, I'm back on another week's wellbeing-leave to urgently get the head right again, amidst a LOT of chaos.
Stock-image impression of my mind at any given moment, on a good day.
Where I've been less transparent is how my spicy-brain serves to overwhelm itself prior to the point of being able to even put words to screen/paper. I'll be briefly discussing this today, and hopefully it's of some value to both my neurodivergent and neurotypical peers.
I may experience a fair bit of burnout like many of you this year, granted. I can give a million reasons, many personal and beyond even the scope of my seemingly shameless self-disclosure.
But I also have, to quote medieval humans and the Simpsons, been foisted by my own petard.
And what is a good ND/mental health peer without some gorram fuckin' accountability**, eh?
Let's make sense of my rambling so far, by drilling down into the one area my dumb-ass ADHD goblinoid brain can't seem to instil maths-related fear: stats**!
(Side Note - easily my favourite track involving ya boi Pharrell. Unashamed 00's RnB/hip-hop fan over here, RIP N.E.R.D.)
SOME EXAMPLE NUMBERS:
(I'll get to how I arrived to said numbers shortly. As per my usual, it dovetails into many, many potentials lead re: future articles and episodes).
Instagram: As of today, I was sitting at 32 backlogged posts to put up. Nothing major, just sharing content from here and flagging some potential future stuff. That was at 11am, it's now 4pm and after a brief social media audit, that number has doubled. lol.
Blog: Don't even start me. It'd take too long.
Topics: I have a running 'master list' of potential topics, organised by broad categories such as mental health, music, hobbies, social discourse, gaming, etc. I'm kidding you not - over three thousand dot-point topics, and many of these can easily splinter off into ever-increasing fractals of sub-topics.
Youtube: About 14 videos, minimum, and upwards of one hundred+ Shorts. If I could be bothered to join the short-form video content game.
Unread Emails: LMAO. Kay, so I'm signed up to a large number of PR firms and promoters for labels, hobby products, etc. I somehow managed to wrangle creating IFTTT rules to shoehorn everyone into one folder on my Outlook. Which isn't the official ISC Gmail either. I cleared that shit up yesterday; it's already back at 2,000.
ome vague and obviously not-objective estimates on time, based on some rough logging:
Insta alone is a good 4hrs+ worth of non-stop posting (no thanks) at an even rate.
Topics? Based on the fact a larger episode such as can take upwards of two hours to write and post, and assuming most might be ballpark 50-75% time-factor? A conservative estimate would be 4,824hrs or 201 days (55% of an entire calendar year non-stop).
To convert this into podcast form, you're easily looking at anywhere from quadruple up to 10x the time. You can do the maths. Like I said, I hate number-crunching, I just like standing back, looking at stats and going 'woah, dude'.
Emails? Let's say a brief two-minute skim squiz at each *just* landed. 66hrs total - I work part-time on a 30hr/week contract, so that's 2 1/3rd weeks up 7 all night and day, doing nothing but reading emails.
It's not feasible, obviously. And nor do I want to be.
Reading the above, you might think 'Jesus Christ dude, you really do be out here hoisting your own petard'. And you'd be sort of right - sort of.
See, the same brain that is consistently and unendingly racing, generative and disorganised is the one I've always had to inhabit. Yeah, being crammed full of input and information in my hobbies (of which this podcast is one) might not seem to help. But it's all a question around perspective and reframing.
NO U:
Plus, you consume a very similar amount of information without trying.
You, being a statistically person, consume on average up to 74 gigabytes per day purely in digital information. You heard me, 74 gigabytes. Those reels add up. (Source, if you don't believe me)**.
Same article referenced above notes that the average TikTok user consumes 225 posts, or 90 non-stop minutes of ~25 second reels back-to-back for the length of a feature film. I personally couldn't imagine a more mind-fraying Hell, and my brain is literally wired to be distracted!
Now let's get REAL freaky with it. I'll leave this handy and existentially-terrifying infographic below:
NB: For the original article by the World Economic Forum, which I highly recommend - click here. (Remembering, this is from 2019 and thus pre-dating the rise of short-form video consumption).
Matt Bristow's aforementioned article puts it even more staggeringly, in the type of scale you normally only usually see when quantifying the stellar mass of the known Universe.
Quote:
"Recently it was estimated that we create 328.77 million terabytes of data each day. Now that may mean nothing to you, it didn’t mean much to me and I’d live inside a computer if I could, so let me put it into perspective for you, it’s equivalent to 328.77 billion gigabytes, which is roughly :
164.385 trillion copies of War and Peace
131,508 human brains worth of data
69.9 billion DVDs."
Source Article again, for lazy folks such as myself.
I'll cap this section off with a comment that made me chuckle:
"Hope I freaked you out sufficiently, I’m off to smash my Kindle with a hammer and meditate."
Hammer Smashed Meditate?
YEAH, THAT'S SCARY. BUT ALSO EXCITING. HOW?!
For me, it's about a couple of things.
I would say neurologically, cognitively and decision/energy/mental strength wise, all the above isn't great.
But it's only not-great when your modus operandi with digital consumption and content creation is primarily passive.
I'll be doing a LOT of work around digital minimalism, the level of choices we have around how we engage with, reconcile and process an overwhelming deluge of information**+++++.
The aforementioned leviathan of backlogged data, ideas in the ADHD Graveyard Of Ideas awaiting Content-Necromancy**,is truly chtonic and Lovecraftian in scope and size. It's unmanageable, and it's undefeatable. Certainly anxiety-provoking on face-value.
And, here's the thing guys. Face-value.
A lot of literature and discourse out there suggests we are automatons, fatalistically chained against our personal and sociological will to a relentless onslaught of memes, reels and the like.
And while yes, you're not entirely wrong there - we have many choices available, here.
Allow me to walk you through a little CBT-flavoured thought-challenging on a few common/recurring anxiety/overwhelm based thoughts that come up, and how I have been and continue to challenge them, as a perpetually forestalled content-creator.
Example A: Instagram.
Trigger: Knowing/realising how many posts I'm 'behind'.
Option A: Take this on face-value (likely outcome - increased anxiety, lowered self-efficacy, frustration, resentment, etc).
Option B: Step back. Breathe. Critically analyse this platform. What is 'behind'? Did I start ISC with the intention or expectation to digitally Keep Up With The Joneses? No. Okay then - reflect. Is this frequency of posts derived from an abritrary impulse by me/encouraged by Meta to keep them profitable against TenCent? Furthermore - given it it IS abritrary, the point of that would is to arbitrate. I choose to proceed posting in a manner that suits me and hopefully my audience. Scheduled posts, prioritising a couple here and there.
(Outcome - A sense of control, some rational planning which I can modify later if needed. Taking my foot off the pedal and also prioritising the heavy life-admin so my monotropism/hyperfocus doesn't keep me posting til 2am until crash and burn)
Example B: Emails
Option A: (See Above, similar outcome).
Option B: (See Above - see where I'm going with this?) + utilising the Search function. Maybe I don't want to trawl through a billion disentangled genres and products and whatnot. Maybe I'm in a blackened thrash mood today, maybe I want to promote that as something I love, today. Well, statistically..... there's 2,000 fucking emails lol. The probability of something being there is actually very high).
((Where content is concerned, I'd like to quickly caveat something. That gargantuan list isn't something I feverishly work on, day in and day out. No need to freak out and counsel me about my own information diet. I got this, it's actually chill lol.
Such a list represents *years* of just brain-dumping stuff into Evernote (and more recently/for many reasons, Upnote**), and going back to time? Maybe 30-40 seconds to a couple mins daily, tops.
Plus, ironically, it's only been as I scale down information that is increasingly not serving my needs**, on platforms increasingly so user-as-product and crammed full of banal advertising** that said information intake is increasingly directed BY me.))
FOR YOUR BELOVED CREATORS:
I thought I'd outlay exactly how much information is out there to give your own favourite Youtubers, streamers, bloggers and content-creators some context.
Guys, I'm just some fucking dude doing a hobby podcast. Sure, it's allowed me many wonderful and privileged journalistic opportunities I am grateful for, yeah.
But we're just a few Aussie blokes gasbagging about things we love.
And we're mostly orbiting around a blog, a podcast, and some socials.
Think about your favourite video content creators - now add in additional mediums and dimensions. Video editing software (a horrendous nightmare of it's own, and for me an entire episode**). B-Roll, miles and miles of B-Roll. Clips. The right thumbnail. Editing down the audio. File compression. Exporting. etc etc.
So perhaps also, factoring in everything I've said today and the general state of [gestures to 2024 late-capitalist apocalypse], as well as the figures around stats and data.
We're all overwhelmed, everyone's doing it tough.
If your parasocial online heroes** are a day late to the post, give em some leniency. Don't get pissy.
And if you're chronically lamenting a feeling of wanting to engage in something but feeling life's too busy**? Well, it IS, but perhaps strategising your time and digital diet can help bulwark this a bit to give you the time and space needed to help create, and thrive.
That's it. That's a Bingo.
When I stay 'stay tuned, lots coming', I'm evidently not fucking kidding.
Peace, Love, and Grindcore xo