The best information overload books 📚

Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney, is a fictionalised story of an attempt at another Moon shot idea; the building of an interspecies communication bridge between humans and dolphins. This was a real experiment attempted in the 1960s, by neuroscientist John Lilly – which I made a film about, for the BBC, called The Girl who talked to Dolphins. Like God’s Debris, Mooney’s book challenges our perceptions of reality, and like Varieties of Scientific Experience, it tries to shed light on what it is to be human. Not only does it cover these grand… show more.

The law of diminishing returns, says Shenk,… show more.

This book is a classic. It starts with the observation that only a handful of tennis players in the world have the talent and expertise to play to win. For everyone else, tennis is a loser’s game – they simply don’t have the talent to play an attacking game. Instead, they must avoid losing. The same applies to investing. Only a few truly gifted and experienced investors can play to win at investing – picking stocks, timing the market, etc. Everyone else, including the majority of advisors, fund managers, and stockbrokers should be defensive – they should invest to avoid… show more.

I like this book because the authors have unearthed powerful insights. In one Reuters study, they say, of slightly more than 1,300 business managers in Europe, the U.S., Southeast Asia, and Australia, 33% of managers were suffering ill health as a direct result of information overload. Nearly two-thirds reported that tension with colleagues and diminished job satisfaction were directly related to the stress of information overload. A majority also admitted that their social and personal relationships have suffered as a result of the stress of having to cope with too much information. That kind of information puts in perspective what… show more.