Information Overload: Do You Wonder Why Your Brain Feels Like it’s About to Burst?

Consciousness can be seen as sort of a sensory organ that takes the brunt of the collection of smells, tastes, lights, colors, noises, and other information that enters the brain through our senses. We register about 13 million bits of information every second.  Or stated another way, which is 34 gigabytes of information or the equivalent of 100,000 words daily (which is about ¼ of Tolstoy’s War and Peace). Your short term or working memory can handle no more than seven items at a time.

So memory becomes a process of filtering as well as remembering. If we don’t do a good job of filtering, we run into trouble. You need to know what to pay attention to and cue your brain to do just that. Reduce the amount of information you are taking in by focusing on the task at hand, not several things.

TMI can be disastrous to learning academic information. Think about it – but not while you have your ear buds in your ears, your eyes glued to the latest game on the screen, and your text material up on your computer.

Adapted from:  http://psychologytoday.com/blog/shut-and-listen/201301. Information Overload.