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Are You Overstimulated?

How has information overload impacted your life, and what strategies have you employed to cope with it? Any tips for fellow tech workers -- or anyone -- looking to manage overstimulation?

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Top comments (9)

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josefine profile image
Josefine Schfr

Am I overstimulated? 100%, yes! I think many of us struggle with this and it's one of the challenges of our jobs and the current day and age.

I try to do the following to combat constant overstimulation:
(not always succeeding, though...)

  • Disable notification whenever I can. I have everything turned off so I will be able to focus on my tasks, and schedule time to check Slack, Email etc.
  • Block my calendar: helps me visualize my to do's and somehow makes it a little easier to not fall into the notification trap
  • Consume news and social media mindfully. This is sooo difficult, but when I manage, I feel a lot better.
  • take breaks away from your devices: sounds so cheese, but literally going outside & touching grass without listening to a podcast or being on a call at the same time does wonders for my mind
  • Clear prioritisation: If it's clearer to me what I want to achieve, it's a lot easier not to get side tracked.
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jodoesgit profile image
Jo

Yes. All the time. Unconditionally.

I don't believe it will ever slow down. I don't think it will ever stop. There's more humans than ever before. What is nature? Even that's on rails now a days. Or inaccessible to people like me. Which is a shame, but at least I've got something. Phones. I am always at most a room away from my phone. Laptops, only a few days a month do I not turn one on. Social media is poison for the soul, and everyone consumes it in some form.

I think it's made people really dull, and it's absolutely awful. You can't hack a personality. You can only form one by being honest with yourself and exploring your interests. By having life experiences and processing them in genuine ways. I'm not sure what's going to happen to this world, but I'm here for it until I'm not. So there's that.

No amount of "dopamine fasting," mediating, or butt chugging bleach will get rid of what this world has created. We are losing our precious things as well. It's very sad, capitalism is very sad...

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michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

As I look at my three different monitors, I have the following apps open, all of which are primarily used for communicating: Slack, Discord, DEV, Front, and Zoom. I also have Notion, where I'm continuously consuming and creating documentation, notes, etc. Finally, I have 6 different Chrome windows open with about 10 tabs in each.

All this to say, yes indeed, I'm overstimulated. 😅

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jenc profile image
Jen Chan

Yes.

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kurealnum profile image
Oscar

I think I am a little bit. I find myself not being able to watch any video that's longer than 5 minutes, which I think is a direct result of overstimulation by watching TikTok for 3 hours a day when I was younger. I try and remedy that by just picking something to watch, and watching it.

Other than that, I feel like I'm not horribly overstimulated. I don't watch the news or keep up with the latest tech trends, and other than YouTube and Discord, I don't really spend any time on social media. The big downside of that is that I have utterly no idea what's going on in the world until 3-4 weeks after it's happened, which for the most part, I'm fine with.

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boop profile image
Boop

A lot of the time yeah, but I relish the feeling

I probably shouldn't, but I do, and if I'm trynna get something done I'll shut everything else off aside from music and what I'm doing, and if I'm stuck on what I'm doing I'll eve n pause the music, and if I'm really stuck I'll shut off any extra monitors other than the one containing the work

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manchicken profile image
Mike Stemle

In a word, yes. In two words, oh yeah. Three words? Yes I am.

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sofiacodes profile image
sofia

Oh absolutely. It’s hard to manage and probably even impossible to avoid, with so many stimuli around us and especially in our different displays (phone, Tv if you have, laptops and computers)

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piko profile image
Piko

Yes!

I already have so much on my mind. So many things I want to build as well as frameworks, libraries, ideas and even languages I want to try. Then whenever I go online my list gets longer.