I’ve written a number of times here about information overload, information addiction and information management. Here are a few of the more popular ones:

• Facebook Productivity Impact
• “There’s no such thing as information overload only failure to filter”
• Email is broken (and my embarrassment)
• Focus on one thing – it’s much better for you
• The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS)
• Stress and Information Addiction
• I could spend hours doing this…

In this TED talk JP Rangaswami thinks about the parallels between food cultivation, preparation and consumption and information cultivation, preparation and consumption:

JP Rangaswami: Information is food

Now there’s some food for thought!

Some ramblings that come to mind:

• I too am someone who’s waist is larger than it should be because my food diet isn’t what it should be. I heavily suspect that my information diet is likewise on the over-eating side of things. There’s probably a more healthy information diet somewhere that I should be following.
• Although, the thought that there may, one day, be the equivalent of the grapefruit diet for information workers makes me shudder.
• I snack more when I work from home because the kitchen is very close. The information kitchen is getting close to being everywhere which is why we are finding it increasingly difficult to stop snacking.
• I like the creative process of cooking, but I’m no master-chef. Pulling together different pieces of information to create something is really rewarding, but the things I see other people doing amazes me.
• I quite like fish and chips, it’s not the most healthy food, but it’s very enjoyable. There are some people that I follow on twitter who are like fish and chips.
• If exercise helps the body to burn food energy, what is it that helps the brain burn information energy?

How would you answer JP Rangaswami’s question: "If you began to think of all the information that you consume the way you think of food, what would you do differently?"