The backstage of official WeChat account often receives some readers' inquiries: "A Jiu, do you have information anxiety disorder? If so, how do you face it? "
The so-called information anxiety disorder refers to a series of self-compulsion and nervousness caused by people absorbing too much information in a short time and the brain center has no time to decompose and digest it.
First of all, I have to admit that I used to be a serious information anxiety patient, and we are all "patients".
Once upon a time, I was even afraid to hear the ringtone of my mobile phone. I am scared by it every time, and my scalp is numb when I see the unread red dot on WeChat.
So during that time, I chose to refuse to accept all the information. I uninstalled Weibo, deleted a lot of WeChat friends and quit all WeChat groups. It was good at first, and I felt that the world was calm at once.
But before long, I became more and more anxious. There is a simple reason. Isn't this a cover-up?
Extremes meet, and there is bound to be a certain degree of separation from information. For example, you can turn off the WeChat message prompt tone in the settings and cancel the message push of most apps, so that when you concentrate on your work, a reminder will completely disrupt the rhythm.
Living in this era of information explosion, we have to learn to face them and treat information anxiety. The correct way is not to escape, but to improve your ability to process information.
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How does information anxiety come about?
Every technological revolution will directly or indirectly lead to the explosive growth of information, especially the development of the Internet. We may be exposed to more information in one day than the ancients in their lifetime.
Behind the massive information age means the intensification of competition. We have to undertake more work and face more unknown changes.
Technological development is not terrible, what is terrible is that our ability can't keep up with the times.
In this era when information is king, if you can't master the ability to correctly handle information, you will be swallowed up by many invalid information and eventually drowned in the ocean of information.
Maybe you have a headache because of information anxiety, but there is a particularly good sentence: "The desire for knowledge is the root of our success or failure. It can interfere with us, and it can also keep us eager to learn and understand life. "
I didn't say that, but it came from the American writer Daniel levitin's Orderliness with the subtitle "The Influence of Cognitive Science on Psychological Efficiency".
In other words, information anxiety is not a bad thing. In the information age, it is better to learn to dance with information than to bury your head in the sand like an ostrich.
Although we can't change the development of the whole era, we can improve our ability by learning the necessary information sorting skills, and it is precisely because of this that change has a breakthrough.
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Although everyone has different reasons for information anxiety, there are still many sexual problems after careful observation. In summary, there are three points.
Many friends have information anxiety because they don't know what they want. So today, when I saw a friend A recommending a course, I quickly signed up. Two days later, my friend B went to Amway for a training, and I followed behind.
This is a typical lack of goals, and it may be difficult for us to find a clear direction in life in the short term.
But here, I want to share a practical method, that is, refusing to study for the sake of learning, trying to start with the confusion encountered in the current reality and learning with a problem-solving mentality.
I believe that many readers have installed various learning apps in their mobile phones. They spend half an hour swiping Zhihu and half an hour swiping the official WeChat account every day. When you go to the toilet, you should also make full use of the debris time and brush a few headlines to see today's news, for fear of missing important information.
However, it is this blind way of absorbing information that deprives us of time and energy. As the saying goes, "My life is limited, but I know it is also limited. There is a limit, I will follow, and I will be in danger. "
Instead of dabbling in everything and becoming a know-it-all, it is better to focus on the current doubts, start with solving the immediate doubts, gradually find your ultimate goal and build your core skills.
Daniel levitin classified information anxiety as choice anxiety in his book Order.
For example, many people will be confused about eating hot and sour shredded potatoes or braised eggplant at noon, and some partners will even be worried about wearing white socks or blue socks tomorrow morning.
We often waste our only attention on many unimportant things and let our time and energy be led by trifles.
To solve this problem, we can try the "satisfaction strategy" mentioned by Daniel in the book.
This word was originally invented by Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate in economics, which means that we only need to make our own satisfactory decisions on some unimportant things, and we don't need to pursue perfection.
For example, when making a plan, some friends will fall into the misunderstanding of perfectionism and want to collect a lot of information, or even want to collect all the information.
Indeed, with the increase of information sample size, the accuracy of our judgment will also improve, but the cost of doing so is too high.
I don't know if you have heard the story that a child went to buy pears. In order to buy the sweetest pears, he took a bite of all the pears on the fruit stand. It sounds ridiculous, but think about it, do we often make such mistakes?
Simply put, the best way to overcome choice anxiety is to start acting. Do it, yes!
We have to admit that most people's brains are not capable of handling multiple tasks at the same time.
In Order, the author Daniel Levitin compares attention to a zero-sum game.
Simply put, when we pay attention to A, we will naturally ignore the existence of B, and we always want to do more things. In addition to the lack of time and energy, we also need to admit the limitations of human brain evolution and that we do not have the ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time.
Therefore, in order to improve our ability to process information, we can start from the perspective of reducing interference, such as the push reminder that we mentioned earlier to close the mobile APP.
Even, we can spend money to buy our attention and learn to divert our information anxiety.
We often hear people say that we should learn to spend money to buy time. In fact, in essence, we are spending money to buy our own attention, outsourcing trivial things and paying more attention to important things.
Regarding the problem of information anxiety, the menu also systematically expounds the working mode of the brain and provides many professional methods. If you are interested, you might as well buy a paper book to read.
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Finally, since talking about information anxiety, I will add a personal lesson.
Maybe you think this method is incredible and too simple, but many things in this world are not complicated in themselves and it is difficult to act.
The answer is: develop good habits of work and rest!
Imagine how we can concentrate on the work in front of us when our energy is insufficient and we are exhausted. When we don't care about our health, we don't eat breakfast in order to sleep 10 minutes. How can I study and go to work on an empty stomach?
Therefore, if you want to improve your concentration and ability to deal with complex information, you need to lay a good foundation for your health, otherwise everything will be empty talk.
The above is today's sharing, I hope it will help you.
I use time to make wine.
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