This might be the best advice I ever give on this blog.  If you are looking for more time in the day, then check this out. 

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet

That's your brain on information.

Does that scare you?  It kind of scares me.  Don't get me wrong, I think social media has made accessing quality information much easier then it has ever been, however, I think we have become addicted with how much information we absorb, how many followers we have, how many networks we are on, what is the latest news...blah, blah, blah.  

No, I am not going to leave for a desserted island and surf for the rest of my life, but I think we can all get trapped into spending to much time absorbing information through all these channels.  I will continue to promote and sell tools on the web and social media, however, I also know there needs to be a limit on the amount of information we process each day. 

But wait Chris, isn't Content King?  Well it might of been, but it is not now.  Social Media Explorer has a great post on content no longer being king here and Gary Vaynerchuck as been talking about context and not content for awhile now.

What to do?  Here's a start.

Low Information Diet

Right now, I know my information calorie intake is blouting me.  

For me it is time to take a page from Tim Ferris and go on a low information diet.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits.  Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking -- Albert Einstein

That is the exact quote from pg 86 in the 4 Hour Workweek.  Right now I am eating to much data from the wrong sources.  Most of us probably are.  So here is what I am going to do.

Google Reader

I have about 30-40 blogs in there, with 1000's of unread posts.  *DELETE*.  I may go back to Google Reader and add only my top 5 blogs that I feel the content is of benefit to me, both professionally and personally.

Twitter

Not that I have a huge following and not that I am following a huge amount of people, but I need to trim down the number of people I am following.  I think it is important to focus on what content and conversations engage you.  This may impact my overall numbers, but I am not in this for numbers.  @aplusk and @ladygaga have that wrapped up.  I will use ManageFlitter to start this process.

Google+

I am going to ease myself into G+.  I like what I see so far and I think G+ has some great features (especially Circles & Hangout) that can help filter your content. This might be the tool of choice moving forward.

Facebook

I will continue to use Facebook, however, I will only be logging in during periods of the day to see what is going on.  Similar to batching email, I will be batching Facebook.  Chris Brogan says it best here....Take back some Facebook Time. 

I think society has made us feel that, if we don't answer all of our emails, or read all of our feeds, or check our blog stats, or see what's happening on our favorite social sites, then somehow the world will fall apart.

I am pretty sure it won't. :-)  

What are your tips to cure information overloard from the Internet?  Comment here or on G+.

I have two perfect examples of what the Internet can do for you.  What I am calling the Internet, some people may refer to it as social media or web 2.0.  It really doesn't matter, I just want to show to examples of some "stuff" that happened to me the other day that would of never happened without the Internet.

Number 1

On Wednesday I decided to show my appreciation for my wife and cook supper for the family.  It was late in the afternoon and I needed a quick and simple recipe.  Cooking is not one of my forte so that is why it needed to be simple. :-)  So I figured, why not ask for a recipe on twitter?  So I did.

Here are some instant responses I received from some of the great folks I follow.

All the responses I received were great, but I decided to go with the one from Tyler.  The recipe was very simple and the family loved it.  The kids even had seconds.  Thanks Tyler.  I also got another tip for the recipe aftewards from Justin at The Hockey Card Show.  The same recipe works in a crockpot!

Number 2

This next example is how the Internet can empower collaboration.  As you know, my bro Adrian and I have our own hockey tv show over at The Hockey Zen.  We recently finished our 2nd mashup video with Keith Korneluk and Chris Kaliszewski from Kingscast the other day and it was a great experience to collaborate on a project with two other passionate hockey fans.  The crazy thing here is Keith and Chris do not live in Saint John, NB, but they live in LA!  I know they would probably like to move to Saint John, since our winters are much warmer. :-)

Now if you had of asked me a year ago that we would be working on a mashup video show with two dudes from LA, I would of said you were crazy.  But we did and it all happened because of the Internet.  How cool is that?  We are planning to do many more mashups and I must say they are a blast to do.  Check out our latest one below and let me know what you think.  And yes, I am losing "The Bet"

Don't be afraid to step out of your local network and see who else you can meet via the Internet.  They may even help you out some day.