While I was waiting at triple-A the other day I overhead a woman at another service window. She was in her late-50s and complaining (rather, boasting in that “I know it all” sort of way) that human brains are overloaded with managing torrents of information in their lives brought on by technology.

Specifically she pointed to all the gadgets “those young people” use, pumping information to their heads faster than it can be digested. She longed for the days before computers.

I thought about what she was saying. Yes, people are getting their information from blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, IM, and text messaging but it doesn’t equate to overload. Rather, these are outlets for obtaining that info. Those same tools allow the user to aggregate and filter the desired information. Tags, folders, even just a quick down arrow to the next post make it easy to manage. News, video, and music is carefully arranged in newsreaders, bookmarks, and playlists. Plug GTD into the mix and there is no such thing as overload because everything is out of your head and into those very gadgets and an old-fashioned filing cabinet.

Young people grow up with technology and they assimilate it into their lives - there is no overload. Not-so-young-people fall back to that “we’re too old to change” story and blame technology for making their lives more complicated. Rewind the clock to the 1940s when science was on the verge of jet engines, nuclear bombs, and ENIAC. People were saying the same thing: wary how those new-fangled devices would change their lives for the worse and longing for the good ol’ days before The Great Depression. A more carefree time when children worked in mills, the same factories dumped sewage into the waterways that powered them, and people didn’t live past their 60s. Those “good old days” don’t sound so appealing any more.

Learn, adapt, seek simplicity, and don’t be a victim of change.

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