AHHH! Information Overload!

I was going through the feedback on The Daily Survey and I took notice of a comment.

She was telling me how overwhelmed she feels as she works on her online business…

“I’m overwhelmed with so many things involving getting this online business moving forward. The lab is already plenty to do, plus now I’m seeing the need to invest time into Thrive video education as well.” 

and then…

“So one of my fears is that I cannot keep up with all the material being covered in the daily while also trying to do all the other stuff.”

I get it. However…

This is exactly how you CREATE overwhelm for yourself. Let me ask two questions here to ponder…

• Do you need to pay attention to every bit of material you have access to – simultaneously?

• Is all of this material immediately applicable to you?

She is a Lab member (and I honestly don’t know who it is since I didn’t ask for names on the survey), so she DOES have access to a lot of stuff. She now thinks she “needs” to go through the Thrive University material. And now we’re piling on the Daily. Hell… I’d be overwhelmed, too!

But, truth is…

She doesn’t need to do it all at the same time.

All of us have access to a LOT of information. TONS! There’s no shortage of it.

And that means that you can never put others into the driver’s seat when it comes to your information consumption. If you do, you will be force fed. It isn’t pleasant. The world will shove it right into your face until you explode.

POW! <<– (that’s your head exploding)

So, you must exercise your own personal policy on information consumption. You must be the driver.

One of the big things I try to do with the Lab is make a Lab membership about much more than information. Lab members have access to a lot of training, yes. But, I’m not stupid. I know you look at training from other sites, too. There’s a ton of courses, blogs, videos, etc. I’m not the only game in town.

So, I make the Lab membership also heavy on support and GUIDANCE. In some ways, I want The Lab to help put order into the chaos… to put order into the information coming not only from The Lab, but also other sources.

One of the big ideas behind The Lab’s Roadmap is “just in time learning”. It simply means that you only spend your time consuming information that is immediately applicable to you, in your current situation, to what you’re currently working on.

This means if there’s a video in The Lab, or in Thrive, or anywhere else that is not currently relevant to you, IGNORE IT. It’ll be there for you later. When you’re ready.

You have to consider the phase of your business as it is. For instance, if you haven’t yet arrived at a product/market fit and don’t have a single offer available yet for anybody to buy, then you have no business at all going through training on anything like webinars, membership sites, paid traffic, etc. First things first! Most of that stuff doesn’t matter until you’ve got a market and a product they want!

It’s why I structure the Roadmap like I do.

The solution to this kind of overwhelm is simply to stop paying attention to ALL of it. Go on a bit of a diet. Perhaps allow a bit of time during the day to follow some stuff you’re interested in (like The Daily )… but in terms of online training, you don’t spend your time going through stuff unless you need it NOW.

And, if you don’t really know whether you need it now or not, that’s also what The Roadmap is for. Or you can just ask me.

I’m all about keeping things simple.

– David