If you are a blogger or internet marketer, you will be only too aware of the overwhelming amount of information that is released every day. It is an endless torrent in which some days you find something of relevance, or a concept that you can apply easily to your business. Other days it feels like you are drowning in a sea of sales pages, marketing hype, time wasting posts and RSS.

 

This saturation of media can be thought of as a stream, a constant input of information that your mind has to process, fit into your current model of the world and make sense of.

To simplify things, we can be seen as a computer that takes inputs from our environment and creates outputs in our actions, words and communication with others. Just like you are what you eat, you are what you read, watch and hear to a large extent.

SHAPE THE INFORMATION STREAM 

In order to succeed in business online, you need to be able to make focussed, clear actions in a defined direction. If you set out to write one concise post every three days, or to write 1000 words on a new book or interactive course then you should be shaping your information stream to help you attain that goal. If not, the sea of competing ideas can easily distract you.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t read some things that are off the topic, but perhaps a good rule of thumb is 80% on topic (for the project that you are currently working on) and 20% other information.

TUNE IN AND TURN ON

An apt analogy would be that of listening to a radio (the old, analogue type, not internet radio) when the dial is a bit off the station. The signal is filled with noise, useless junk information that is stopping you from clearly hearing the message that is supposed to be coming through (or at least that nickelback song they keep playing).

If you tune the radio and get rid of the noise and static (useless information) then the signal (useable & actionable information) becomes clearer.

The best way I know to re-align my information stream with my goals is to go through my automatic information collections (rss feeds, email lists, bookmarks, blogrolls) and optimize them for the market or niche that I am working in.

Sort your RSS so that you are constantly seeing information from the top experts, and not being inundated with useless information or empty hype.

I am currently going through this exercise myself, trimming down my RSS subscriptions to a manageable level, only keeping the ones that have consistently provided me with valuable or interesting content.

Removing those that have failed to deliver gives you space to add new interesting feeds when you see them and not have them get lost in the noise. I have been unsubscribing from mailing lists that never have anything of interest, and only keeping the ones that fill my inbox with useable, relevant information.