Information Overload

In articles published online I have often made the point that information overload is the major reason why people fail to achieve their internet marketing goals. Now I have been taken to task by one of the readers of this website who wrote: “It’s very easy to write that information overload is the reason why so many would be internet marketers fail, there are hundreds of people writing that. Nobody ever writes much sense about overcoming this obstacle and making online marketing success achievable.”

That is a fantastic question because I agree with the writer and have actually bought countless reports and EBooks on the subject and they all appear to say the same thing: “The way to overcome information overload syndrome is to set up strict time management guidelines and stick rigidly to your time plan.” Having been through this problem myself many years ago I have to admit that I never found time management of any use whatsoever in overcoming the problem.

Think about it for a moment: You set up a time management schedule that allows you to study your instructions between 8 and 9 am each day and at exactly 9 am you must move on to something else because this is what your time management schedule demands. But, what if you have only read through the instructions you are studying in that hour and haven’t had time to read in detail and extract all the information you require? Surely this makes the hour you just spent wasted. All you’ve achieved is filling your mind with even more unanswered questions.

I have a feeling the online God’s were aware that this question was going to arrive in my inbox some months ago when I came across an article by somebody else, sorry I can’t give her/him credit by name as I usually do because I read the article, accepted that it made a lot of sense and then moved on without keeping a copy. The article dealt with how to avoid information overload in a very practical manner and actually made some sensible suggestions.

The main suggestion was that your study:action ratio should be set at a minimum of 1:1 when at present it could be as high as 20:1. That is twenty hours studying followed by 1 hour action that is almost certainly creating the overload phenomena that you are experiencing. The writer suggested that the best performing internet marketers probably studied for 1 hour to create action for 10 hours. Now if you had a 1:10 study:action ratio wouldn’t online life become easy?

If we make our outcome a study:action ratio of 1:10 then our first goal should be to make a conscious effort to run our business with more action and less study until we achieve a ratio of 1:1. We study for 20 minutes and regardless where we in the report we stop studying and do 20 minutes practical work towards making a profit.

Have you ever wondered why there is no university on planet earth that is able to teach entrepreneurism? It is simply that there is no academic in the world that believes in a study:action ratio anywhere close to 1:1. Yet every entrepreneur is a doer rather than a studier and that is what makes the difference. They don’t need to know why a thing works or what benefits it may bring to mankind; all an entrepreneur needs is an action plan to sell it. They never suffer information overload because they are too focused on the final action and the final dollar.

Understanding goals and outcomes will help you to understand some facets of information overload.