Information overwhelm is real: How a neurodivergent woman manages this ancient problem
Originally published on Medium
I check my Instagram and notice a budgeting page is starting a new podcast. I’ve followed this mom’s business journey for over a year now and silently cheered as her hobby became a thriving business. Her budgeting system was the first that made sense and actually worked for my brain.
Was I excited to listen to this podcast? Yes. Did I still get information overwhelm? Also yes.
Time for some deep breaths.
Information overwhelm is my constant awareness of the never ending waitlist of information available to consume. It’s knowing there are books and videos and people I will never read or watch or learn from. My YouTube “watch later” playlist is a perfect example: I keep adding videos that I know I won’t watch.
And as the list grows, so does my distress.
Information overwhelm started in childhood. I stood in the library one day and stared at the shelves of books. I realized for the first time that I will never open some of them. I would never even hear about many of these books.
When I learned Spanish and American Sign Language, I gained a whole new world of information. And a new realization of how many non-English language books and media I will never know about. My personal “Watch Later” waitlist grew.
Again and again I have this realization: There’s so much I can’t consume!
To stop the overwhelm spiral, I borrow perspectives from the past.
Ancient peoples experienced information overwhelm too. This is strangely comforting. No matter when in time people exist, we feel like there’s too much knowledge to take in. Even without internet and computers and mass printing, we felt this.
This is how I stop the overwhelm: I quietly paraphrase this ancient reminder while taking deep breaths: “Of making many books there is no end…” It helps. The overwhelm is downgraded to marvel at the volume of information our human creativity produces.
This is what people do; we create. Create for ourselves, for others, and for money. I can allow the overwhelm to, well, overwhelm me. Or I can accept I won’t get to everything and just marvel.
I choose to marvel and delete my Watch Later list. (Don’t worry, it’ll be full again in a month.)