Today was the day, right? This morning you woke up with every intention of conquering your corner of the world and finishing everything on your to-do list.

The problem is, 3 hours have slipped by already, and you’ve spent all that time reorganizing and polishing that to-do list, yet you haven’t ticked off any of the goals from it yet…except maybe, “Plan my day.”

I can’t be the only one who struggles with this. In this age of pervasive informational influx, it’s often hard to focus my brain on that one task that needs my attention most (whatever that may be today). So many ideas and tasks and goals and thoughts flit through my brain that I have trouble focusing on just one and tackling it with all my vigor.

I wanted to research what this mental noise might be, more than mere “distraction,” so I searched for with terms representing how it feels to have this “information overload.” Most articles that came back were articles on technology and computer programming. Then I came across this article by Brad Berens, “It’s Not Information Overload: It’s Information Hoarding.” Bingo.

In the article, Berens describes what this hoarding looks like. It’s the researcher who hangs onto every book and article and quote and snippet, thinking, “I might need that later.” Again, bingo.

This same problem extends into the digital world, too. When trying to clean up our physical lives, we digitize them, which only transfers the problem to a new medium. Berens gives the example of photographing a favorite mug: in case it breaks, at least he’ll have a memory of it recorded somewhere, lest it be lost forever. I’m the same way. Even after a recent e-mail purge, I noticed that I still have over 5,000 “important” e-mails in my inbox, some more than 15 years old. And 222 of those haven’t even been opened, because apparently, I’m saving them for later.

So my question is, where’s the root of this information hoarding?

My initial justification is that I love learning (which is true). Why waste great sources of information that I could use later? The requisite response, of course, is: Why save it, since you won’t?

Underlying that initial justification is something deeper that’s also a bit harder to admit: Fear. I do fear losing out on something that I could have learned or read or known. I fear not having it available to learn whenever I need it. More so, I fear having once known something and then losing it—which is why I’ve got a whole bookshelf of books I’ve already read and will never read again.

The root of all that fear (and hoarding, a.k.a. greed) is Pride. I want to learn and know, not necessarily because I want to increase in wisdom but because I want to be smarter. There’s a difference between the two, and of course that difference is pride.

This begs the next question: is there an answer to the woes of the “Information Hoarder”?

As a follower of Christ, I know that the answer lies in acknowledging what’s sin and what’s just bad management, and then dealing with each accordingly. I’ve got my priorities mixed up, so that’s a great place to start. I also need to name these sins of pride and greed, remind myself of them often, and fight them when they rear their ugly heads.

One passage came to mind as I pondered these issues today. Paul reminds the believers in Ephesians 4:22-24 that they had been taught in Jesus “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

These are choices I can and should make: put off the old, be renewed in the mind, and put on the new. I can’t find a better to-do list that, and better yet, it doesn’t need polishing!

Now to do it.

©2022 E.T.