Tag: productivity

Information Glut

image_571255852034517I grew up in a beautiful house furnished by books and stacks and stacks and stacks…of periodicals. Newspapers, magazines, brochures and catalogues were stacked on chairs and tables. This was the decor of my mom, an information hoarder who could not stand to let a single article in The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Economist…go unread.

I loved this in her, even as the clutter drove me crazy and I vowed my house would be free of any pile thicker then at the width of my hand.

Then came the internet. And Evernote. I am a compulsive clipper. I have digital notebooks which, if converted, could paper the chairs of a giant suburban neighborhood.

Why? What am I going to do with this information? Read it? I am convinced there’s a hole in my brain through which 90% of what I read passes within ten minutes. Still, I persist. I suppose some inherited traits are unexpected.

Internet: Prosecco or Giant Pack of Starbursts?

I am far from alone in the conflicted feelings about the internet. Is it good? An open field of knowledge and connectivity? Or is it bad? Name-calling and people failing videos?

Of course it’s not one or the other, but both. Like an artisanal candy bar or a bottle of Prosecco — good but maybe not so great for you in bulk.

The problem is that it begs to be consumed in bulk. For my part, I may not be cycling through YouTube videos, but I do consume book news as if it was extraordinarily cute cat videos. New releases, writer interviews (especially process interviews, because I’m convinced that if I find the perfect process my novel will finish itself), essays about reading or writing or comparing characters in books…it’s endless.

Sadly, it takes time and these days time in my life is a more rarefied commodity than, say, red squirrels in our eaves or rats in the chicken coop.