We live in an information age. Information is available quicker, and more easily than ever before. There is so much content. The Youtube statistics for May 2017 were 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute! That’s more than the TV industry creates. There are billions of posts on social media platforms every day!

With so much information it’s easy to start drifting and drowning if there is no way to deal with it. Most of you readers won’t even finish reading this post, you’ll be on to the next piece of information.

It’s so easy to get lost online, to get lost consuming. That’s the trap. You’ve probably already experienced it. You watch one video, then another, and another; you read a blog post, go to Facebook, back to Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, and all of a sudden your day is done and you don’t remember anything because you’ve spent your time doing mostly meaningless stuff.

Our attention is what is sold to advertisers. Everyone is vying for it. creating distractions to get a hold of it.

There goes another day of your life, and you’re never getting it back. Another twenty-four hours where you gave away your attention to others, instead of using it strategically, for your goals.

Then you get frustrated because there is so much information.

And then . . .

Alert! Alert! Information overload! You feel overwhelmed! You can’t control it! You know something has to change. But you need the info, right?

Do you really? Is it not mostly your ego telling you you need more info? Seeking information all the time is a form of procrastination.

Information is not the problem. Information is more abundant than ever before. As said at the beginning of this post, it’s the information age. Information isn’t as valuable as it used to be.

What is valuable is your attention and your work. That’s why advertiser’s pay for your attention and why you are paid to create value.

So if information isn’t the problem what is? Seriously, if we have access to incredible amounts of information, why aren’t we in drastically better situations compared to a few decades ago?

The thing is, we are still human, and humans make stuff, they do. What is lacking is action. We have so much info the problem is that it consumes our attention non stop if we aren’t careful. We don’t have any left to make stuff. We need to filter information. We have to filter through the pile of crap. We can’t just consume everything and anything. We need to be picky. What is important to you? Do you really care what that celebrity said? Or how that other person you don’t know is living their life?

There is no problem with consuming all the time if that’s your thing. But if you want to be doing stuff and using your time as best you can, it might be a good idea to question what is happening to your attention and how you’re using it.

So, if you’re like me and you want to do things, have an impact on the world and help people, rather than consume content all day, how about you go do something that doesn’t consist of passive consumption.

If you actually finished this reading this post and didn’t skip to the end, I congratulate you. And whether or not you skipped to the end I thank you for your attention. Now share this post and go make something.