I’m Running Out of Brain Cells
I’ve never claimed to be the smartest guy in the room. Maybe the most intense or the most passionate, but never the smartest. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m running out of brain cells. And I’m not the only one. Campaigns should be aware of this…and adapt immediately.
Let me explain.
I know I’m a little abnormal when it comes to the massive amount of information flow I receive. I don’t have time to read a lot of books, but the past year I’ve read “The Tipping Point,” “Outliers,” “The Blogging Church,” “The Art of War,” “The Reagan Diaries,” “Pour Your Heart Into It,” and “The Four Hour Workweek.” I subscribe to “Men’s Health,” “Politics Magazine,” “Wired,” “Fast Company,” and “Inc.” I read them cover to cover. I read about 50 news and blog articles a day. While at work, my TV is always on Fox News or MSNBC. I stay on the phone all day and hold more conversations than I can count. I read my tweet stream at least once every two hours. Yesterday I received 327 emails. I don’t watch a lot of TV except every episode of Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, House, and Mad Men. I spend most of my TV viewing time watching movies, probably around two per week. I also watch Tekzilla daily, every Gary Vanynerchuk, Ijustine, Kevin Rose & Tim Ferris, Diggnation, and Totally Rad Show podcast.
That’s pretty much my life in a paragraph. Well, except all the conversations I have with my wife or all the stuff I learn at church. Oh, and Gamecock football information, chats with buddies, or any of that other stuff one encounters just going through life.
As you can tell, I soak up A LOT of information every week and I’d be lying to you if I told you I remembered even half of it. To keep track of what I need to remember, I carry around a spiral notebook at all times. I use my iPhone voice recorder daily. I keep track of all work projects on Basecamp and I use Evernote.
Still, I can’t keep track of everything. I can’t tell you what happened three episodes ago on Diggnation, a Techcrunch post I read 16 days ago, the number of tackles Eric Norwood got last week, or a story I read in Outliers. I soaked up the information, but I didn’t retain it.
Maybe I’m just not that smart, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think I have a limited number of brain cells. You do too.
I use myself as an example to say this – the Internet is called the Information Superhighway for a reason. It’s full of information. With blogs, emails, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc…we are being bombarded with information from all angles. Those Internet tubes are getting clogged folks, and so are our brains.
Political campaigns should keep this in mind when building websites, writing emails, sending tweets, or doing anything else on the Internet. Clutter is killing campaigns, mostly because they are being part of the clutter. People don’t have enough brain cells to soak up all the information they are receiving. Remember that.