Look out for your own overload

In a day full of meetings, calls, work and learning ... information overload can really come for us. That overload feeling doesn’t always hit with the same speed or intensity though.

There are different types:

- Lookout for the slow creeper.

The cumulative effect of overload builds up during the day. With no break between meetings, we keep loading up! We’ll be full soon and no more will fit in. It hits at about 4pm!

- Lookout for the fast flier. When a topic, meeting or presentation hits us and we’re done, overloaded. Too many slides, too much too soon, so complicated. Boom! Full.

Both situations need not be a surprise to us. We don’t have to be caught out or shocked that we become overloaded. It happens slowly or rapidly; and we can always be prepared for it.

A powerful way to manage load is to ‘empty the truck’. Rather than trying to carry all the information yourself, externalise it. Get it out of your head and into something else ... onto a page or into a notes file.

Our days of ‘I’m here soaking it all up’ are done. It’s simply not an efficient way for us to work with information. Save the soaking for baths, movies, socializing and relaxing. Aaaah!

Make sense of what you can

It’s not possible to understand or make sense of everything ... you know, not everything! When we are understanding, learning and ‘connecting the dots’ about a situation over a period of time, we are making sense ... sense making.

We do it naturally and instinctively but we can also learn and focus on how to do more sensemaking better, sooner, quicker.

There is value and calm for us focusing on the stuff we can make sense of and to not worry so much about the rest... the chaos. As more information comes to hand about a situation, our sense of the situation grows. We know more. We make more sense. The chaos can become a little less chaotic perhaps.

We can’t know everything all at once. It kind of doesn’t work that way. We will see more and differently as more things come to light for us. There's no need to battle all the chaos, all the time.

Join me as we just make sense of the things we can, progressively, bit by bit.

The gallery in your mind

It’s open now ... an exhibition. featuring imagery, clips, videos, snippets, quotes and dramatic headlines and links from all of the stuff you’ve been absorbing lately. 

Oops ... we didn’t realize it but the gallery is now full. And it has not even been curated yet! 

Curation is when the exhibits in a gallery are organised and arranged, identified, sourced and carefully chosen. They present a story, a setting or a theme to gallery visitors as they walk, wander, wonder and experience it all. It flows, makes sense, is a delight. 

It’s time to clean out our current exhibit. 

Time to paint the walls, sweep the floors, and get ready for another newer and fresher exhibition. 

The next one. Let’s make it a better one. 

It’s time to become more of a curator of what you let in to the gallery in your mind. To more carefully choose what you will watch, look at, listen to and absorb. 

We don’t need to let just anything into this gallery of ours. 

More isn’t better. 
More isn’t beautiful. 

Curate, choose and be discerning. It is yours after all. 

This is sensemaking

This is sensemaking. We are 'in it'. Trying to make sense of so many things. 

As we begin to know something ... we 'find out'. Almost like a maze. 

And we think 'that’s it'. 

Then things change. New information comes to hand. 
New information, insights and understanding. 

Because we have more information and experience with that information, we can look back over data, dates and details to connect more dots and make more sense. 

And then we can act again based on what we now know. 

So we're right in it. 
It’s wild, wicked and changing rapidly. 

Keep on making sense as things come to light no matter where you are or what you're doing.  

We are all uncovering, discovering, learning. 

It's this very human activity of trying to 'make sense' of it all. 

Half speed

If you’ve felt busy anxious overwhelmed worried or hyper ... you might be running at twice the speed.

Thinking at 2x

Speaking at 2x

Walking and talking at 2x

Jumping to conclusions at 2x

Interrupting quicker than normal

Getting frustrated sooner than usual

Losing patience quicker than usual.

If and when we experience any of these ‘faster than our normal’ responses or reactions, it’s a great opportunity to take a speed check.

Rather than thinking ‘Oh I need to slow down’, try thinking ‘half speed’.

Half speed.

Half of the current crazy speed of thinking working talking juggling leaping and reacting. At half speed we begin to notice more, we’re tuned in to other people better and things can become clearer for us. It might not *really* be half speed, but it’s an easier mark to reach for.

Is this a new way of thinking for you? Rather than staying busy frantic and overwhelmed, it’s worth slowing down when other things seem to start going faster.