Too Much Information: A Gift or a Curse?
Recently, we welcomed a baby into our family and entered the world of parenthood. Almost immediately, we were bombarded with an overwhelming amount of information. There are countless pages, YouTube videos, and other resources, all offering different advice. It’s confusing to decide whether to follow one piece of advice or another since everyone seems to have their own opinion.
I look back at the time when my parents became parents. They had no books, YouTube videos, or Instagram reels to guide them. They had to rely on their intuition and judgment, based on the cues from their baby. Maybe the baby was hungry, maybe sick – they made decisions based on what they knew. I think that might be the best approach: trusting intuition rather than drowning in information.
Information is valuable, and having access to it is good. However, there comes a point where too much information becomes overwhelming and confusing. It’s like having too many clothes: if you have just a few pieces, you don’t have to think much about what to wear each day. But if your wardrobe is overflowing, deciding what to wear becomes a critical task, factoring in comfort, the weather, and your mood.
Similarly, fewer choices in life can sometimes be better. When options are limited, you settle for what’s available. But when you have too many choices, making a decision becomes difficult. I remember my childhood when TV had only 50 or 60 channels. Cartoons had fixed times, and you had to choose one to watch. Today, with digital platforms like YouTube and Netflix offering billions of videos and series, it’s hard to decide what to watch. Many people spend more time scrolling through options than actually watching something.
This overload of choices is frustrating. We want to invest our time and energy in something worthwhile, but we can only judge its value after watching. In the same way, we need to be selective about the information we consume. If we aren’t, everything will vie for our attention, and every doctor or influencer will try to impose their opinions on us.
So, my advice is: don’t fall for everything you see. Trust your intuition and judgment. You are the best person to know what is good for your baby. That, I believe, is the most important thing.
