Information overload in the mind of a student athlete just trying to grind

Stick to the grind, day in and day out. You hear this from coaches, academic advisors, teammates, and teachers. But what does all that really mean? How do you stick to the grind, push to your extreme limits, without wearing yourself out? Information overload can be the death of a student athlete. Think about all the coaching they go through and still have to maintain their academic standards. The last thing a student athlete wants to come home to is a flood of emails from a discussion group saying that everyone needs to post their opinion by 2:30 knowing you don’t even get out of weights until 4. Tired, hungry, and in need of a nap you decide to stick the grind and open the emails to become so overwhelmed you don’t even care what the other students are talking about. You open your phone to all the texts and other social networking notifications that you have missed in your five hour “grind block” only to close those and just lay on your bed and think about where you should begin. The taking in of information is never a bad thing but there needs to be some sort of gap where a person can unwind. Whether you be a student athlete or just joe-shmo from down the street, no one is prepared to intake more and more information after a long day. At some point you just want to slide through your instagram timeline and call it a night. However, it is the information overload that helps us to keep moving or grinding as a society. We don’t want to fall behind, therefore we do our very best to stay up and just stick to the grind. We plan ahead, we make to-do lists so information overload doesn’t get the best of us.