insane info
Chinese New Year and Infomagical Challenge: How to remain curious, active and sane!
This past weekend we jumped into another
Chinese New Year: The Year of Monkey
. Occupying the 9th position on the Chinese Zodiac, the spunky Monkey is the original party animal! Charming and energetic, Monkeys crave fun, activity and stimulation. In general, with their agile minds and multiple talents, monkey type of people can master any subject.
The positive traits associated with Monkey are:
intelligent
dignified
optimistic
romantic
sociable
quick-witted
confident
agile
motivator
curious
gregarious
Watch out for the negative signs that include: egotistical, vain, arrogant, selfish, deceptive, reckless, snobbish, stubborn, suspicious, manipulative, restless.
woman contemplating
It's not surprising that such mercurial nature appears to both embody some key characters of our age and at the same time expose the mounting challenges of our age, specifically, in terms of information overload.
Just this week NPR has launched a Note to Self podcast program, which explores effects of technology on our lives. If you ever feel like you have a hard time handling all the information pouring out from all the screens, yet you read and watch them anyway out of habit or unconscious anxiety of fear of being left out you are experiencing information overload. Here's the link to WNYC:
two people info
According to Dimitrios Tsivrikos, consumer psychologist at the University College London, it is not possible to process more than a certain amount of information in a day.
It turns out as high as
80% of people
responding to a survey from NPR's program said that sometimes they get headaches, insomnia or eye twitches as a result of information overload -- but they still continue consuming more. It's self-perpetuating cycle. The bombardment of information and data interruptions stress us out and keep us from properly concentrating, which stresses us out further, lowering our ability to concentrate further.
Out of our rising concern about excessive information consumption, I'd like to propose that we deliberately carve out hours out of a day, or a day out of a week to be information free time.
rock path
Less is actually more. It's the sustainable way to maintain our balance and sanity.
monkey-2016
Helen Chen
Post by: Helen Hongwen Chen, L.Ac., M.S.T.O.M.
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