We live in the age of enlightenment. Fitness information is everywhere and more is being created every day. Even this post is a good example of that.
Despite the value of learning, I’ve come to question if swimming in all of this fitness information is all that great. There are several problems that can come from overloading on it.
The first issue is too much info can cause paralysis by analysis. There isn’t just a lot of information out there, but there’s a lot of conflicting information at that. It’s almost impossible to get a solid answer everyone can agree on. The minute you believe you know what to do, someone comes along with a different opinion. The common solution is to further research each opinion. This only causes you to fall further down the rabbit hole and spend a lot of time and energy to become confused.
Excessive learning is also costly and eats up a lot of your lifestyle resources. It eats up your time, money, energy and attention. These are resources that can be spent towards actually producing the results you want. While learning is a good thing, it is a form of consumption rather than a form of production. Reading a book or attending a weekend seminar is fine, but it’s not any different that watching reality TV or binge watching Netflix.
Learning is only going to help you if it helps you be more productive. If you don’t take action on anything you learn it’s no more helpful than wasting resources in any other activity.
In this week’s podcast, I discuss how you can avoid the entrapments of fitness information overload. I’ll also discuss a few ways you can make the most from the information you learn so it is the best bang for the buck.
