In my job, I see the same pattern with a lot of people. They’re capable and hardworking, but they’re constantly battling this low-level exhaustion and lack of motivation that doesn’t seem to match how much they’re actually trying. Lately, I’ve been wondering if part of it comes from something most of us don’t talk about much: the nonstop flood of information we deal with every day.
I didn’t even know there was a term for it until recently — “information overload.” But once I read about it, I recognized it immediately. It’s that feeling of having too much coming at you at once, and your brain just starts to shut down or scatter. For me, it shows up as urgency, mental fog, irritability, and this strange sense of being tired without having done anything particularly hard. I’ve also noticed it makes it harder to stay motivated, even on things I actually care about.
What surprised me most was realizing how many of the symptoms I’ve felt myself — the low productivity, the anxiety, the difficulty concentrating, the general heaviness. It made me wonder why we don’t treat this more seriously.
I’ve been thinking about how nature handles this kind of thing. In nature, when something gets out of balance, there’s usually some kind of correction. Too much of one thing and the system pushes back. We don’t really have that built-in correction with information. We can keep scrolling, keep checking, keep consuming, and nothing external stops us. So if we want balance, we have to create it ourselves.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve started being more intentional about a few things: getting stricter with what information I actually let in, organizing what I do keep so it doesn’t live in my head, and carving out time where I’m not available to every notification or update. I’ve also been working on sharpening my analytical thinking — not in a heavy way, but just getting better at quickly deciding what actually matters and what can be ignored. That last one has helped more than I expected.
I don’t think the answer is to completely disconnect or go off the grid. But I do think we need to stop pretending our brains can handle an unlimited amount of input without any consequences. The motivation issues a lot of us are feeling might not just be about discipline or work ethic. Sometimes, they’re just our minds asking for a little less noise.
Mimic Nature 