Too Much Input, Not Enough Output
I struggle with input. I don’t mean the kind of input where people give me solicited or unsolicited advice. I mean what I consume, including social media, movies, conversations with friends, acquaintances, and coworkers, email, and texts. This doesn’t even include my thoughts, which I didn’t think about as input until today.
Usually, we think about input as external sources. However, I am starting to wonder if my thoughts are, at times, another form of input. It’s not like I hear voices or anything like that, but sometimes, when I see something, that sparks a series of thoughts. I have previously thought of these sparked thoughts as me processing the input, but I believe it is the process of creating additional inputs that I still need to process. My thoughts can act as a multiplier to input, causing them to become too much to handle all the time.
On the one hand, this can be incredible for someone creative. On the other hand, processing so much input can cause significant time requirements to process that input and generate some output. Take my ideas list, for example. As of the moment of writing this sentence, I have 133 video ideas on my list. Even if I made a video every week (which is the goal, but will take some time to get to), that’s videos for the next 2.5 years! Sometimes, I have so many ideas that I don’t know what to work on now, so I think about what I should do, kick myself for not being productive, and get frustrated with myself, and nothing gets done. It can be a vicious cycle. Add to it that sometimes I get an idea I want to work on right now but cannot for some reason (which I discussed in the post- Great Ideas, Wrong Time).
I really need to work on managing my input so that I can effectively process them and increase my output. Building my Second Brain has helped, but sometimes, my inboxes there get out of hand. Writing this blog has actually started to help by giving me a way to be productive while working through my thoughts in a way that is hopefully helpful to someone else as well. I’m still trying to work through it and find better ways to manage everything. As I find better ways, as always, I’ll share them so they can help others, too.
