Knowing What To Do Versus Doing It – How To Handle The Information Explosion
Posted May 28, 2008 in News 20 Comments »
As a freelancer, most of the time I’m surrounded with far more information than I can ever absorb, let alone use.
Not only does every newspaper, magazine, and television shows offer up their particular flavor of advice on how best to succeed – now there is also advice from the Internet to deal with. On the Internet new advice can appear practically every minute.
Much of the advice being offered is sound, too. It’s good advice, if only one had the time to put it all into practice. (Yes, I’m aware that there’s a lot of bad advice out there too. Discerning good advice from bad advice is the topic of a whole other blog post… )
What’s a freelancer to do?
You want your business to be successful. You want to work efficiently. You want to offer the best to your clients. But, there’s no way that you can absorb, let alone follow, all of the various pieces of advice that are currently available.
In fact, it’s all too easy to be overwhelmed by the information explosion that surrounds today’s freelancer.
You don’t have to let the information explosion leave you with a defeated feeling. There are ways to manage information to your advantage.
Here are four tips to help you not only absorb at least some of the information being provided, but also to put it into use:
Prioritize
As a freelancer, you probably already have good prioritization skills that help you effectively prioritize your work projects. You can use those same skills with new information that you receive. When you receive new information ask these key questions (and others) to determine how useful that information is to your business:
- What does my business stand to gain from using this information?
- Will applying this information help me to save time?
- Can this information help me to earn more?
- Does this information increase my quality of life?
Mentorship Approach
Under this approach, a freelancer picks one, or several, leading information providers (perhaps focusing on leading bloggers for their field) and concentrates on following mostly the advice of their virtual mentors. (A drawback can be that your mentor’s situation may be quite different from your own. What works for them may not work for you.)
Research Approach
You are probably already familiar with this approach and don’t realize it. Users of this approach don’t let the available information dictate what they do. Rather, they use the information as a research tool. An example of using this approach would be when you want to join an affiliate program. You use the search engine and magazines to research your options. You find as much information about your topic as you can possibly find. Then, you base your decision and actions on the results of your research.
Piece By Piece
Many successful people use an approach of learning something small, but useful every day. Over time, the sum of the effort adds up and the results can be as great as if they had made a more major effort. This can also be one of the less stressful approaches to information management. Once you have absorbed something useful for the day, you can relax and focus on other things.
Whether you use one of these methods of information, or a combination of all of them, there is no need to feel overwhelmed or defeated by today’s information explosion.
What do you think? :)
About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 19 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura’s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts
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20 Comments
Abhijeet Mukherjee
May 28th, 2008 at 6:01 amI think prioritizing is certainly a major major task when it comes to freelancing. It helps a great deal when you are doing something to deadline.
Rebecca Leigh
May 28th, 2008 at 7:56 amI have learnt to monitor my reaction to the inflow of information.
If I am relaxed and engaged by whatever I am reading, thinking about how I might usefully apply it AND noting down a few concrete action points, it’s all good.
If I am feeling anxious that I could never implement all the recommendations I am reading, or am desperately searching, scanning and comparing a bunch of articles on the same topic in the quest for the one ‘right answer’ – well that’s a sure sign there is something wrong.
That’s when I know I need to walk away from the PC, get some air and refocus on what it is I am trying to do.
I think many freelancers (particularly new ones like me) must feel overwhelmed from time to time by the volume of advice about how to be a ’success’. Thanks for writing about this.
Lisa
May 28th, 2008 at 8:35 amIt really is so overwhelming. I spend so much time reading, absorbing information – I’m a total sponge these days! The trick is to weed through everything and pick out what is truly useful.
Joshua Clanton
May 28th, 2008 at 8:49 amSomething else that I find useful in managing information so that I’m learning from it without feeling overwhelmed is to batch process things once a week or so. Dealing with all the information at once means that I can only afford to pay attention to the important things.
Alex
May 28th, 2008 at 9:13 amI work on a different idea that all information is good weather I use it or not, I will spend all day reading different blogs and articles but I might not put any of it into practice. I learn it so that if I find myself in a position where I need advice, I might have some sort stored away from some article I read a while back.
Jamie Grove - How Not To Write
May 28th, 2008 at 9:26 amI’d add Discussion to the list. Using a core group of fellow freelancers to bounce things around can really help separate the wheat from the chaff.
Laura Spencer
May 28th, 2008 at 9:59 amThis response is great!
We have a really creative group reading here that really knows how to manage information.
I like how everyone has their own approach. . .
Joe Norton
May 28th, 2008 at 12:33 pmCool post. I wouldn’t have thought of that topic.
Shycon Design
May 29th, 2008 at 6:34 pmIf you’re ever read “4 hour work week” (which is a pretty decent book) then you know doing is more important than keeping up to date with everything. There is an infinite amount of news and information available on the web (too much since RSS)… it can eat up a lot of your time.
Try ignoring news, email, and every other distraction and you’ll be amazed how much you can get done.
John thomas
May 29th, 2008 at 8:13 pmAwesome post. Just do it man!
JJ
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
John Millstream
May 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pmAll information is one. We get confused and think it is made of bits.
Drew
May 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pmonly allowing positive posts does worlds for the quality and usefulness of discussion. its like watching a debate with every view you don’t agree with edited out.
Drew
May 29th, 2008 at 11:42 pm…that was sarcastic. i can’t believe you took that to be authentic.
Jon Phillips
May 29th, 2008 at 11:53 pm@Drew: humm… not sure what you’re talking about :/
Laura Spencer
May 30th, 2008 at 8:39 amThanks, everyone, for all of the feedback!
Dan
May 30th, 2008 at 11:15 amI love your bullet questions for prioritizing information…you are dead on! Synopsis: is it relevant to me? Adding your RSS; thank you.
Sherry Love
May 30th, 2008 at 4:34 pmI have been wondering about this same question for a few days. I am a mom and just have entered the blogging world, but already I feel so overwhelmed by the amount of information I have to absorb. I have to learn how to use the blog flat form, use social networking, and pings, and comments, and CSS. My head is a little spinning right now. I probably have about 10 blogs in my feeds so I can know the latest updates in blogging world. But there are so much that I could barely read them all let alone apply all of the methods. So now I should just choose one and run with it. It’s probably better and of course less stressful.
Sherry Love
Sherry’s blog: http://sherrylove.net
Dr. Nicolas Rao
January 10th, 2010 at 9:40 pmI am also new to free lancing. I have had a reasonably good earning from the net over the years after I retired from clinical practice and had to work from home or a net cafe. But I managed to use my medical knowledge to get myself a good job in medical transcription and even became a consultant and trainer.
However, after the death of my son the later Sgt. Noel R. Rao, US Army Aviation, I had to take a break.
On my return, I am bewildered. I expected to see a lot more variety of free lance jobs available and they are. It seems that due to my multifaceted abilities accrued over the years – I am 58 years old; the confusion has me all spread out.
I guess the point about prioritization is very pertinent. However, I did enjoy most of the comments I saw. Thank you.
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