One of my old bosses at Walgreens used to always, always use the word “inundated.” I think he had a morbid fascination with being drunk on the feeling of importance/power/status/ego that he would continually stress he was terribly inundated with emails, work projects, tasks, meetings, to-do’s and voicemails.

Inundated with inundation.

When all you do is answer unending emails with paragraphs of nonsensical text, arbitrary information and data flow, rambling voicemails on your office and cell phones, faxes (still, in this day and age!), Facebook messages about silly meet ups or bridal showers you don’t care about, et cetera et cetera, you literally have to close your laptop, turn off your phone (throw it against the wall?), swipe a long arm across your desk while unimportant papers fly into the dusty air, and scream at the top of your lungs.

“E-NOUGH! ARGHH!!!”

I am experimenting with stopping the unnecessary information flow, and that pertains to self-induced or externally-simulated (negative, stagnant, without-value) flow.

These are some of the experiments that have worked for me (and is working for me), along with some which are in progress and have yet to be determined the final full effects. Perhaps this will help you as well in your inundation elimination.

Phone

After my T-Mobile phone plan ended in November 2010, I decided not to renew the plan altogether. I was, after all, moving to my second home base in Taiwan. And all this after experiencing a tsunami of change creation I’ve never experienced in all my life.

I had quit my corporate job, thrown/sold/gave all my crap away, sold my car, got rid of extra credit cards, read 2 books a week, Karate kicked myself to intense focus and persistence, isolated myself in my bedroom closet as I typed away, writing intense books, novels, poems, essays, and crazy shit you’ll never read.

But I digress.

I got rid of my cell phone, plugged the numbers I wanted to keep into my gmail address book, and went off into the world, un-callable, unreachable. The only way for people to see me is face-to-face, the richest form of communication. The best form, in my opinion. Humanity and connectivity at its most original, most pure, most honest, most undiluted form.

For others, if people wanted to get ahold of me, they would message me on Facebook, @ tweet me, or email me. (More on these later.)

Common questions/concerns I received while not having a phone for nearly 8 months now:

What if an emergency comes up and you need to dial for help?
Isn’t it hard for you to get in touch with people?
How am I supposed to find you, talk to you?
Isn’t that bad for your social life?

To answer these questions thoroughly:

What if an emergency comes up and you need to dial for help?

Emergencies rarely come up. Fact. It is the fear of emergencies and impending doom/death/failure that causes us to remain in a state of perpetual fear.

I have a good head on my shoulders, trust my instincts, and am savvy enough to act immediately when said emergency should ever occur.

All my money stolen while backpacking in SE Asia this spring? Qualifies as a mini emergency? Maybe.

But when I’m in the middle of freakin’ nowhere (a forest-green mountainside of rural Laos in an old, beat-up and dirty mini van), no phone shall help me. I don’t care if you have a most beautiful iPhone and satellite wi-fi. You need to understand phones, like any other tool, are simply tools. They are not us, they will not save us.

Isn’t it hard for you to get in touch with people?

I get in touch with people only if I want to and feel a need to. My energy is restored when I’m on my own, that is how I gather myself, that is how I am invigorated, that is how I operate as a person.

How am I supposed to find you, talk to you?

Did it ever occur to people that sometimes I do not want to be found?

Isn’t that bad for your social life?

I don’t care about social life, non-social life. Life is life, whether it’s spent with a thousand other people all at once or you by your lovely self. How one lives his life is solely up to that person alone. No one else needs to judge or have certain expectations.

The caveat to all of the above is, I do have a Taiwan phone, which works only in — you guessed it — Taiwan. Even this is unbearable for me. Incoming texts, and phone calls which distract me from my work, from my dynamic get togethers with extraordinary people, from my mindful walking of the city/world, all these serve to take away my attention. For now, it stays as I explore the island more, in my solo adventures. 9 times out of 10 it’s turned off. One day, it may simply vanish.

You may not agree with my stance towards phones. I completely understand where you’re coming from, as a former avid phone user.

But you cannot deny this truth: if I sit down and have dinner with you, my focus and attention is completely and solely you. Never will a phone sit by my glass of water, never will I feel urged to check Twitter or email or text messages. You are my world, at this very moment. Nothing else matters.

Facebook

Facebook is starting to feel like a black hole to me.

I’m starting to not enjoy it for its surface-level form of communication, if you can even call it that. ‘Likes’ do not carry any real value, except for social proof here and there. I cannot take the ‘Like’ with me, I cannot barter with it, I cannot hold it in my arms. It doesn’t care about me. Why should I care about it?

An average Facebook user spends 23 continuous hours on Facebook a month. Disgusting. This is not counting those FB addicts. You know who you are. You’re probably on FB right now, in the open tab next to this site in Google Chrome.

We are addicted. I know I have been, spending weeks/months of my life since its inception pouring over its vast pages, wall posts, pictures, games, apps, tests, surveys. I’m weaning myself off this addiction. It won’t be easy, but it’s never impossible.

One day, I may deactivate myself from it completely. I don’t know when this will be but the day you cannot find me there, you can look up from your screen and find me in real life, looking into your beautiful eyes, wondering why you’re busy looking for my second self that you miss my real self standing right in front of you.

Twitter

I started Twitter in summer 2010. I’m not afraid to unfollow everyone or to only follow those who I need to, in order to refresh my spirit, encourage my creative self. Do not mistake an unfollow as an end to our friendship. This is foolish and is a completely incorrect assertion of said activity.

The Twitter stream is a constant flow of human connectivity, of positive or negative energy flow. I choose who I follow quite consciously and mindfully. I recommend you do the same. There is always a purpose behind the why.

It’s okay to not tweet all the time. If you have to think about what you’re going to tweet, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Use Twitter only for these purposes:

• As one outlet, out of many, for your creative expression.
• As a simple, direct form of communication with close friends or peers.
• As a tool to ask a question to the community, knowing that the answers are not always ‘correct’ and shall always carry a layer of opinions, prejudices, expectations with it. At the same time, this is the pulse of the collective, a small snapshot in time. This is humanity.

Other (secondary) purposes:

• To build a personal brand.
• To build an online following so you can market to them, talk with them.
• To be addicted, for no other reason than you are bored and this is an amazing tool to distract you from your boring life.

Whatever your purpose, be true. Who you are online is who you ought to be in real life.

Stop putting fake pictures up as your avatar. I don’t care if that bunny is cute. I want to see your real face, your eyes, and look at you, feel you.

If you’re not a bodybuilding champ, don’t say you are one. If you’re not a vegan bicyclist, don’t take a picture of you and your bike next to a vegan farmer’s market. If you’re not an entrepreneur, don’t give advice on starting your own business.

Transparency is key. Authenticity is Truth. You are King/Queen.

Muddying yourself from this transparency, from this authenticity, is death to your true self. You are hurting yourself more than you are hurting others. Step away from the knife. There is no need to hurt yourself any longer. You are loved, just the way you are.

Email

I cannot even begin to start on this death trap that email is. So instead of saying everything’s that’s already been said, you need to read the following (and more importantly, act upon it):

Help Create an Email Charter
Email Checklist
Delete, delete, delete
And for that matter, all articles on Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero
How one Stanford professor eliminated email completely from his life

Experimenting with checking email once a day, then once every other day, then once a week … these are just some of the frequencies I’m testing out.

It’s crazy, this whole email explosion that is our inboxes. I severely despise it, this gargantuan beast that it is. Chances are, you do too. I want to respect other people’s valuable time and attention, to ensure mental debt is not accrued on their behalf as well as mine. So I make it a point to not send anything that does not serve as love, Truth, compassion, value.

It’s hard, going from one point in my life reacting/sending over 250 emails a day to now simply processing 5 or less emails a day. I’m aiming to get this number even lower.

Mindfulness in clicking send. Remember that. Energy is being sent towards another human being. Be purposeful.

Other Sources of Information Flow

TV. I’ve not owned or regularly watched TV since 2004. This means I stopped it altogether while in my sophomore year of undergraduate university. I must have saved years of my life from this one conscious and deliberate act alone. I’m very, very glad for this, too, because the world is absolutely amazing and I need all the time I can get in order to explore the depths of it, to discover myself, to find crevices of kind spirits out there, stuck between the pockets of bland and mindless entertainment.

Magazines. I am very mindful of my media consumption. No one person is ever exempt from it, I don’t care what you say, this is the society and world we live in. When brilliant minds channel their brain power to making you click that ad on the side panel of that website, something is seriously wrong with our focus, our values, our art and creations. Most magazines serve as vibrant eye candy, that is all. The few that make it through this mess are the ones with actual content in it, the ones that truly matter and makes a positive difference.

Blogs. I rarely read blogs. Fact. I used to consume so many blog posts, click on every single link there was, leave comments like urban graffiti, fascinated with how bloggers market their content, attract their audience, up their hit count, et cetera, et cetera. This was natural behavior, certainly, especially as I was starting out with Castles in the Air. Now, I simply don’t care for any of it. The very few people’s blogs I do read are from real people, with messages that are truthful, authentic, challenging, heartfelt.

Comments. I deactivated my comments feature for this site back in December 2010. Continuous information flow from readers is a very personal choice. Some writers enjoy this constant flow, feeling the energy from the audience. Others feel more of a drain than a lift. It is my personal nature to enjoy my time online as a sanctuary. It is a time to reflect, to be challenged, to be in quiet revelation. This does not, however, mean I am ignorant and what I say is all that matters, all that stands. Comments need not dictate my day-to-day feelings, and the moment I felt that it was, I turned it off. Besides, you have better things to do with your time than to comment, don’t you?

**

All of the above experiments in inundation elimination have proven to give me something priceless in life, something we like to call time. What we do with our time should be deliberate. If you don’t meet with yourself, if you don’t ask yourself why you do what you do, what are you doing with your time, with your life?

I aim to have a deeply meaningful life. I know you do too. Such tools, like the above mentioned, should serve us, not the other way around. The moment we feel an obligation, feel an unquenchable thirst to mindlessly check/update/tweet/blog/post/comment, is the moment we need to check ourselves.

Reflect upon the why before proceeding. Be honest. You will fare better when you do.