It’s Time To Stop The Noise And Just Do It

Information overload.

I’ve been wrapped up in that blanket for I don’t know how long and I’ve let it keep me in place the whole time. I recently discovered something about myself and I wonder if you might be able to relate.

I enjoy surfing the Web in search of things of interest or bits of wisdom that will make me a better person, a better Web publisher and marketer. To exclude myself from such knowledge would make my journey a lot harder. I’d sign up for this feed or that one, subscribe to so-and-so’s newsletter, etc.

Then one day I woke up and realized I was overwhelmed with all that information. It was too much to process and left me spending more time trying to figure it all out rather than putting the things it taught me into practice.

Don’t get me wrong: those are worthy endeavors, and things I still do, but now I do it in moderation. In fact, I’ve even pruned my list of information sources. Now, instead of having my feed reader constantly showing me I have 1,000+ unread feeds, I’ve been able keep them under control by unsubscribing to a great many of them.

Instead of being bombarded with all the newsletters I’d get in my inbox that sold the same thing as everyone else, I unsubscribed to many of them as well. All this adds up to more time for me to do things that I can profit from.

Have I reached the pinnacle of all Internet marketing knowledge? Heck no! Class never ends. But I have reached a fork in the road. One path leads to success. The other path leads to the false expectation that something will be different if I just keep doing the same thing just a little longer. Friends, it doesn’t work that way. If we don’t like what we’re getting out of life, then we need to change what we’re doing to get something different. Period.

While quenching my thirst for knowledge, I had been waiting for a red flare to go up. It didn’t and it wasn’t going to either. I have to be that red flare. And if you’ve allowed yourself to float aimlessly on a sea of information, waiting for the wind to blow you to shore, then you need to be your own red flare, too.

You’ve heard the saying, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Well, sure he does, but only if he decides to fish!

We learn by doing. We learn by seeing and listening to other people do things. But if it is our goal to do what they’re doing, we must not be content to just sit on the sidelines. We need to get off our butts and do something with what we’ve learned and stop thinking we’re doing something just by submersing ourselves in data. That’s why I decided to stop the noise and started doing things myself.

Have you experienced this? What are some of the ways you’ve handled it?

Photo by Asif Akbar.