A colleague recently asked a question on LinkedIn about how people handle the overwhelming amount of information available online through blogs, websites, and social media.  I thought I’d share my answers:

1)Be OK with not knowing everything - the secret to your everlasting happiness isn't waiting for you in a tweet.

Sometimes I find that I'm afraid that the answers I'm searching for are "out there" and if I don't get as much information as possible, I'll miss them. I've found, however, that in business and in life, there are few answers "out there" that I need, most of my answers were things I knew all along.

2)Beware of the "noise" creating more problems than solutions.

It's similar to marketing - have you ever seen an advertisement for a product that solves a problem you didn't even know you had? I prefer to go out into the world of information when I have a specific challenge that I'm working on.

3)Limit the places you hang out.

There are a lot of conversations happening on the web, and trying to take part in all of them would drive a person crazy. For example, I spend about 10-15 minutes a day on LinkedIn, about 5 on Facebook, and spend about an hour a month looking at blogs. That's it. And I don't miss a thing; or at least nothing that has proven important.

4) Read a lot of books.

The information cycle for books is much longer than the almost instantaneous nature of the internet.  That means that while online information can be more timely, the material in books tends to be more thought out and of a higher quality.