Turn Off The Water, The Glass is Overflowing!
It’s not whether the glass is half full or half empty anymore; it’s how to turn off the water because the glass is overflowing…
With the holidays amidst the chaos that ensues with shorter days and unpredictable weather, I’m hearing that everyone is feeling stressed out and in survival mode. Students arrive without their books and parents forget appointments. Yup, even me. I showed up at a doctor’s appointment that I had cancelled the week before; I had completely forgot that I had rescheduled it and didn’t erase the original appointment. Oops! I couldn’t believe that happened to ME! I’m the one who organizes everybody else!
That’s when I read this and it all started to make sense to me:
“It’s like having water poured into a glass continuously all day long, so whatever was there at the top has to spill out as the new water comes down. We’re constantly losing the information that’s just come in — we’re constantly replacing it, and there’s no place to hold what you’ve already gotten. It makes for a very superficial experience; you’ve only got whatever’s in your mind at the moment. And it’s hard for people to metabolize and make sense of the information because there’s so much coming at them and they’re so drawn to it. You end up feeling overwhelmed because what you have is an endless amount of facts without a way of connecting them into a meaningful story.”
– Tony Schwartz,”The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working”
We have too much going on. PERIOD. Back in the day, we used to call it “Sensory Overload.” And that was when we played loud music while walking at the same time. Today, we have access to more information than we could ever learn and more movies than we could ever watch in a lifetime. In addition, we need to keep up with the Joneses using social media that pours even more useless information into our overflowing glasses. That’s why we can’t take in more information and can’t remember simple things, like removing an appointment from our calendars…
Young adults and teens tell me that they have no short-term memory. Huh? This is really a problem. Memory issues used to effect the elderly, but every day I see kids having lapses that they shouldn’t have in their youth. Their glasses, too, are overflowing with useless memorization of facts for rote AP classes at school, and with texting and indulging in superficial conversations using overused expressions with abbreviations that make communication a stretch at best.
We need to stop and pour out some of that water in our glasses. Turn off stimulation. Connect with our friends and family. Then we can savor interesting information and process it. By doing this, we can commit thoughts to our long-term memory.
So, slow down, choose what it important to you and do just that over the holidays!