I used to look at new technologies as a way of increasing how much content I could consume. In my car, or in airplanes when I wasn’t reading, I would try to make use of every minute to listen to language lessons, podcasts or audio books. As the volume of content kept increasing, and more of my time was filled with taking it in, I found that I passed a saturation point beyond which more information became counterproductive. Just because I can spend much of my time taking in content doesn’t mean that I should, or that I would retain it if I tried.

There are very few people who can absorb and process extraordinary amounts of information. Glenn Reynolds and Robert Scoble come to mind. I no longer aspire to match them. Instead, I am more careful about whether a content source is worth the time. I know that I need time to think.

All of this reinforced a lesson I took from business school – that we were there partly to learn about accounting, finance, marketing, etc. – but more important, to get comfortable with making decisions with incomplete information. Research enough, I discovered – not too little and not too much; then make a decision and keep the business moving. Confusing bandwidth with analysis, or taking in more information than you need can actually lead to worse decisions, or no decision at all.