When you’re about to become a dad, one fact becomes clear very quickly:

With parenting, there is WAY too much information to absorb at once.

I can’t physically take in the amount of data that’s smacking me upside the head at every turn — opinions about baby nutrition; ideas about strollers; opinions about whether we should have a crib,  a co-sleeper, or a bassinet (which, until very recently, I thought was a lesser-known member of the woodwind family); ideas about infant sleeping patterns; on and on and on.

But this isn’t just the world of a father-to-be, is it?

This is the way life is becoming everywhere.

No matter what we’re talking about — if we want to make a good decision at work or learn when the next iPhone is coming out or change our career or find an new recipe for dinner — the entire world is full to the brim on information about it. If we want, there are petabytes of information available on our subject, usually providing any and every contrasting viewpoint on said topic.

(Sometimes even if we don’t want the info it comes anyway, as my wife will tell you about the incessant “mommy book” recommendations she’s getting these days.)

It’s no secret that each of us have instant access to more information than ever before in all of human history — usually from a device that fits in our pocket. I’m quite sure this fact isn’t surprising to you at all. I think, though, if we can start to observe this notion neither as a hassle nor a blessing, but as a megatrend it will help us understand something important — especially if you, like me, are a person who attempts to teach other people something.

Humans are amazingly varied, but in this we are all very similar: we don’t have the capacity to absorb the constant barrage of data pelting us on an ongoing basis. We simply can’t keep up. It’s not even physically possible to notice it all, much less process it in a way that allows us to make sense of things.

This is why our learning experiences must start adopting more “Just In Time” learning methods — giving people the information they need when they need it, and not before or after.

If you are in the “learning/teaching” business, the information deluge megatrend is going to completely re-write the way we work, and why we get paid.

I know a “just in time” method is how my wife and I have decided to approach parenting — frankly, we’ll drown in data if we don’t.

Is it any different for the people you are teaching/training?

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The people who run the world do so because they care to do so.

They are not any smarter than you or me.

They don’t have access to any better information.

They’re certainly not of higher character or moral fiber (if that wasn’t proved to you in 2008-2009, you weren’t paying attention).

They don’t have more grit or resilience.

(If we’re being honest, they may very well have started with more connections or money, but that’s becoming less and less important as it gets easier and easier to connect.*)

And this is why it all comes back to “care.”

The people who run the world — those who make the rules, etc. — do so because they want to do so. The vast majority of us opt out of these decisions because it’s such a friggin’ terrible hassle to participate. We want the world to be better, but if we’re being honest, it’s just such a damned pain in the ass to actually make it better.

If you feel this way, you are not alone.

There are many days when I wake up and think…

“Holy shit, is it really worth the hassle?”

Good question… for my kids and their kids, I’m pretty sure it is. Then I think…

“Can one person truly make a difference?”

On most days I stay convinced that’s the only way it works. Then I think…

“Deep down, do I somehow enjoy banging my head against a brick wall?”

No, I don’t. But if I don’t care, who will?

The thing about making a “dent in the universe” is that you often have to be the hammer doing the denting. We don’t talk about this very much. It hurts, and often times, if we’re being honest, it kind of sucks. But I’m also pretty sure it’s the only way things really change — if we care enough to actually see it through.

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*The money thing is admittedly tricky because of the whole Maslow problem: unless we have our basic needs taken care of, we don’t really think about these “bigger” issues. But “need” is more relative than we give it credit for. Money is horribly distracting — most of us, particularly in the US, do NOT need as much money as we think we do. We think we have to compare ourselves with the people who were born into a higher tax bracket, but of course, we don’t. We don’t REALLY need many of those things. We’ve just convinced ourselves otherwise.

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In our heads, we “get” why diversity is so important in our organizations — in practice, though, diversity is, well… really freaking hard.

Why is this the case?

And why is it so much more difficult for us to capitalize on diversity than it is for us to understand why it’s crucial?

This week I discuss this exact issue over at one of my favorite blogs, Switch & Shift.

>>> CLICK HERE TO READ THE DIRTY SECRET OF WORKPLACE DIVERSITY >>>

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