Are you showing symptoms of infobesity? 10 information diet tips to transform your results.

How fortunate we are to live in the 21st century with access to so many tools that amplify our lifestyle and performance. Whether household aids, fitness tools and trackers, pcs, smart phones, or artificial intelligence, all these tools make it possible for us to achieve so much more than ever before. With the right inclination and information, we can rapidly master skills we never thought possible.  The challenge, however, is making sense of the relentless onslaught of information, which offers some wonderful benefits yet has the potential to render us imbecilic. Who hasn’t wasted precious time reacting to tantalising click bait or multimedia. Our brains love this variety but, if your brain works like mine - a sieve on steroids, you may be alarmed by how little can be recalled after an impromptu information binge.  So, what’s the answer? According to neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, author of The Distracted Mind, our ability to perceive or recall data and use it to make choices depends on the brain being able to filter relevant information. The more irrelevant the data bombarding us, the more difficult it is to retain what matters. To prevent yourself from becoming an information butterfly, you may need to prescribe yourself an information diet. Here’s some of the ideas I explore with leaders.

Your Information diet

1. Plan your information diet for the week – compartmentalise information absorption into allotted times of the day. Filter and prioritise incoming material. Whether it’s your business reports, emails, research, multimedia, or strategic topics.

2. Instead of diving straight into email, pick up complex material when your brain is most awake.  Time the learning after physical exertion if you can, even if just moving from one office to another.  The physical activity triggers the release of neurotransmitters essential for memory formation.

3. Allow for a few minutes of reflection, then plan to discuss or experiment with the information as soon as possible to force you through the learning cycle.

4. Set yourself a challenging question or investigation ahead of the review to prime your brain to retain the information later. This increases retention over passive reading or learning by 10-15%.

5. Create frustration during learning. This leads the brain to process material more deeply, creating longer lasting memories. Set yourself difficult questions, search for answers and set strict deadlines.

6. Retrieval practice is one of the most reliable ways of building memory. Test yourself on what you have learned, try to summarise it.    The more difficult the retrieval, the stronger the long-term learning. 

7. Challenge yourself to share or teach the information to someone else, it focuses the mind and forces you to formulate coherent thoughts.

8. Limit time on one topic. Set deadlines and change focus.  Moving on to other activities creates a temporary frustration and increases long term recall.

9. Set a learning goal, take notes, record observations and questions.  Discuss the information with a colleague sooner rather than later.  The more fully you engage with the material, the deeper the understanding, the long-term learning, and the formation of unconscious associations.

10. Finally, consider these factors in relation to your team’s learning.  Encourage careful bite sized learning, use pre-assessments or questions to prime learning.  Try to organise how information is supplied, processed, and used to encourage sticky learning.

You have probably noticed that the best leaders have an uncanny ability to receive, process, interpret and apply vast amounts of information. Why not try a new information diet to accelerate your route to mastery and transform your results.  

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