It hits us from every direction, and there’s no end in sight. Every time we do a search on Google, we get far more information than we asked for, not only in the hits, but in the accompanying ads. Interspersed in news articles and at the end of the article as well are enticements to click for more information that may or may not be related to the article we were reading. Unless we have premium music channels, there are periodic ads pushing information at us. “Free” streaming services hit us with unrelated information at unannounced intervals, breaking our train of thought about the show we were watching. Nearly every web site is supported by ads that demand our attention. And, of course, for those who still read newspapers and magazines, whether digital or physical, there are ads scattered among the articles that are supposed to attract our attention.

It’s more than we can keep up with, more than we can pay attention to: information overload!

But what can we do about it—besides stick our head in the sand and ignore all incoming information? Not a very practical solution since some of us need information to operate, and some of us want information because it enhances our lives and allows us to make informed political and business decisions. So there must be some way to manage what information gets to us.

The first step we can take to reduce out input of information is to limit our sources of information to those we trust. We all have a list of those, but probably don’t restrict ourselves to the list because it requires too much thought and a lot of hopping about. If that’s the case, it’s time for the next step: get a news reader (just Google “news reader” or “RSS reader”) and select one of those. This is used to aggregate our sources which can be done by source or subject or both. Once done, all we have to do is go to the news reader to find our already-limited information. Most are cumulative and will retain links until marked “read.”

The second step is to set aside a time to interact with our reader. This can be done in one of two ways: one is to scan the items in your reader and mark articles to be read later either by using the reader itself or by transferring the links to an app like pocket, which is designed to do the same thing. The other method is to scan and read the articles that seem interesting or appealing right then.  I recommend the second method, having found that unless there is a specific time set up to read those “later” articles, we are likely not to do it. They just sit in the “to be read later” app or folder forever. And in some cases the links eventually go bad as sites clean up old information and delete old articles.

The third step is to exercise some discipline as we read those articles. Skip the ads, Don’t take the click bait. Read the article and move on to the next one that looks interesting. Otherwise, the time spent with our reader will become as overwhelming as the mountain of information we’re trying to restrict.

And there is nothing to prevent us from having multiple topics in our readers, or if there is a desire for even more separation, having separate readers for separate subjects.

Time spent setting up some sort of information input management is time well spent, which, of course, leaves more time for other activities, like making art.