The information piles up. Then when you look for it, you think you have found the piece you are looking for and then it’s not the one you thought, so you put it aside, for now, and keep looking, for the one you thought it was.
What is going on here? Well, you have redundant information, and it is in your way in several places.
How did it get here? You thought it was interesting, or entertaining, or valuable to you or someone else, or it reminded you of something, or someone, so you saved it. To save it, you had to first, fold it or mark it, and clip it or cut it and put it in a pile. Maybe you tried to avoid the pile and so you found it on the internet and bookmarked it, and put it in that virtual pile.
Second, you had to remember where you put it, and that is hard, and is taking too much time. So, you picked it up again, or printed it out again, or found another copy again.
Redundant information can cause you to second guess yourself on a regular basis. It will not be where you need it, when you need it, and you will waste hours every week looking for the right version of it, several times. It will cause you to REARRANGE.
On top of that you have also put other information about the same subject. Often just added to the pile on the basis of the headline. So now you have what you think is more information on the same subject. What you really have is several versions of the same information from different sources all researched from the same original source, just phrased differently.
On top of that, most of this information is usually about something you have been interested in and participating in and practicing for a long time. So, you already know all the details (and more) included on the piece of paper, generated by someone else about a topic they are only recently excited about.
To stop the madness try this one easy and super simple trick:
1. When you are tempted to save information ask yourself, “Do I already know this?” If the answer is yes, congratulate yourself on the depth of knowledge you already posses and recycle or delete the information.
If you found this post to be information you already knew, let me know. You can comment below, email, call (505) 243-4356, post on Facebook, Tweet about it or drop a post card in the mail.
