What are we supposed to do with all this information?

I was speaking recently with leaders in online retail, and they were talking about the endless reports put in front of them.

Sales reports. Ad reports. Customer behavior reports. Inventory reports. Reports on reports. AI summaries of the reported reports.

And the thing I kept hearing was not, “We don’t have enough data.”

It was, "What are we supposed to do with all this data?"

Data overwhelm is not just a problem for the ad executive staring at campaign dashboards. It is a problem for almost everyone now.

Workers are trying to sort through emails, texts, notifications, metrics, charts, summaries, updates, platforms, and opinions. Parents are tracking grades and locations. Patients are tracking surface skin temperature and heart rate variability and other indices that don’t help you.

And somewhere in all of that, we are supposed to make good decisions.

That is a resilience issue.

Resilience is the ability to navigate change toward a positive goal. But high cognitive load makes that harder. Decision fatigue makes that harder. Information overload makes that harder.

More information does not automatically create more agency or a better lifeSometimes it just creates more vigilance.Sometimes the most resilient question is not, “What else can we measure?” it’s “What will would I do with the answer?”

Where in your life or work do you have data, but not an action item?

Ask yourself: is this data helping me navigate toward something? Or is it just making things harder?

All my best,

Dr. G