Dadann/Shutterstock
Recently, I came across a pitch for an online professional coaching summit featuring forty “thought leaders” — each of whom was listed in the conference program alongside a list of their five recommended books. For a moment or two, I was excited — because as a professional coach myself I always want to learn more — but then that excitement mutated into overwhelm. Can anyone absorb the wisdom of forty thought leaders in one week, let alone each of their five favorite books?
I’m not alone. We’re all bombarded by insights, advice, “hot takes,” and “tips and tricks” from people on and off the internet who are, purportedly, experts. And many of us avidly consume it. For example, I used to have subscriptions to two print newspapers and several magazines. And I couldn’t bear to recycle anything until I’d read it first. One day, my spouse, irritated by wall-to-wall newsprint, exclaimed: “Just because it’s interesting doesn’t mean you have to read it!” That statement might seem obvious to some, but it forced me to ask whether my compulsion to acquire knowledge had become self-defeating in some way.
At what point might knowledge overload stunt our learning and growth? And what’s a better way forward for those of us who feel completely oversaturated by what other people claim to know?
First, it may be helpful for us to develop a deeper awareness of what’s going on. If, like me, you’re compelled to suck up secondhand knowledge like a vacuum cleaner — what’s behind that? As I’ve seen from my own experience and that of people I coach, often the desire to acquire information springs less from a desire to grow than from a fear about something. What are those fears?
Fear of Losing Control
At times of rapid cultural, economic, and global change, we can feel lost, frightened, and unprepared. When those changes threaten to affect our discipline or even our livelihood — such as in the case of generative AI — we may believe on some level that acquiring enough knowledge will protect us. And to some degree, this is reasonable. A person who upskills in AI is likely going to be better prepared for navigating the unknown future than somebody who doesn’t. At the same time, it’s worth distinguishing between genuine “upskilling” — focused programs with clear learning objectives — than compulsively reading everything out there about AI. Outside the realm of professional development, we may find ourselves binge-reading on other scary topics — such as anything in the news right now — that also suck time and energy away from activities we find meaningful and satisfying.
Fear of Incompetence
Early on, academics learn that the way to demonstrate expertise in anything is to “master the field.” So if we haven’t mastered the field, we don’t feel qualified to play in it. In coaching, I see this tendency every time a researcher postpones an overdue writing project because they have to read just “one more article” about the topic. Or a new department chair may feel insecure simply because they haven’t had a fancy leadership training. The academic emphasis on learning by being mentored (“mentoring” in this case meaning a pileup of well-meaning advice), also can lead people to assume that all real knowledge comes from the outside. People can dramatically underestimate — even ignore — the power of their innate abilities to observe phenomena, notice patterns, develop intuition, reflect on successes and mistakes, and otherwise learn from firsthand experience. The more time we spend scrolling on our phones, reading that blogpost, or listening to the eleventh podcast of the week, the less present we are to a world of miraculous phenomena right before our eyes.
Fear of Missing Out
With AI-powered tools at our fingertips, we think we can and should know everything. We want to read every book — or at least be familiar with the title, author, and key takeaways — listen to every TED talk, and attend every training program. But we aren’t generative AI. Our human brains can’t absorb a firehose of material from a one-week conference, let alone the entire internet. Masterful teachers, facilitators, and coaches understand the limitations of the human attention span, as well as the staying power of slow, paced learning. They also know that choosing to spend a focused hour on a single topic means letting go of five other compelling topics. FOMO may be the hardest fear to address, because it requires us to do something that has fallen so out of fashion that its name sounds strange and unfamiliar now: sacrifice. There will always be the conversation not broached, the insights left ungathered, and levels of self-awareness untapped. Learning anything meaningful requires sustained, undivided attention, and that carries opportunity costs.
This doesn’t mean that we have to resign ourselves to stupidity. Quite the opposite. In the age of AI, it’s time to stop equating intelligence with reams of information, and rather with the ability to:
control and focus our attention span maintain presence — with ourselves, with others, and with the physical world reflect on our firsthand experiences and learn from them be comfortable and curious with things we don’t know or understand
All of these practices — focus, presence, reflection, and curiosity — seem countercultural in this era of distraction and polarization. They require a commitment to change old behaviors, and to ongoing practice. And while you could read any number of articles on “cultivating presence” or reflective practices, the best place to begin is by putting the phone down. What have you not been noticing?
