Comments on: Information Overload Will Eat Your Brain

By: Trey Baird

Trey Baird — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:47:23 +0000

Myspace is still superior to Facebook when it comes to promoting music and video projects. That is, until people give up on Myspace completely.

Otherwise, I think all of this is good advice.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:00:08 +0000

@Richard
This isn’t the place for this discussion, but I’m not going to delete your comment. I actually appreciate your taking the time to come and visit, whatever the pretense.

With that said, I never intended to “insinuate falsehoods” about you. I took offense to your post on Zen Habits and perhaps over-reacted a bit. Hopefully we can come to a peaceable truce and agree to disagree on this issue. Thanks for your time.

By: Richard Miller

Richard Miller — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:42:06 +0000

I figured I would take it to your blog instead of polluting Leo’s further. And this way you get to delete my post. Ha!

Please don’t ever insinuate falsehoods about other commentators again. It makes you and your blog look really bad.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:07:13 +0000

@Very Evolved
Thanks very much for your insightful comment!

It’s interesting that you mention the brain can only quickly switch between separate tasks. Sounds like the brain works much like a multi-threaded computer program on a single processor. Interesting, indeed…

I agree that it’s far better to devote your time to only one or two tasks. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible in today’s business world. It seems that expectations at work help to perpetuate multi-tasking as a philosophy of life. In addition, we have more recreational opportunities available to us now than ever before.

It’s certainly best to prioritize your life, but when that’s not possible, there are ways to make multi-tasking more manageable.

By: Very Evolved

Very Evolved — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:48:05 +0000

Really a spot on observation. I'm a neuroscientist so I'm fascinated by these sorts of problems. Information overload happens a lot during human decision making and the sad truth is the brain does not actually multitask. It can switch between things extremely quickly (otherwise you wouldn't be able to talk on the phone and drive at all), but it takes a performance hit in the process (why talking on your cell while driving is similar to being drunk). I wrote an introduction to the biological aspects of how the brain reacts to decision making situations like really complex situations like the stock market in my article The Stone Age Brain vs The Stock Market. As much as you indicate that prioritizing might be compromising, it would be far better to devote limited concentration to a few sources effectively than many in an ineffective manner. The only hard thing about this decision point is picking the best things to focus on. -Patrick veryevolved.com Very Evolved’s last blog post..Why it’s hard to change bad habits, and what you can do about it