How can you process all the urgently relevant and interesting information being hurled at you?

You can’t. What you can do is steer and prioritize.

Ross Dawson has some common-sense tips at rossdawsonblog.com. These including setting goals, so you know which information really does need your close attention and which you can ignore or skim; picking the right sources of information, like a well-edited periodical in your field; setting aside regular time for reading; improving your reading and note-taking skills; aggressively filtering low-value email and other time wasters; being open to useful information that falls outside your usual filter or sources; maintaining personal contacts; and “Sleep[ing] on it!”

Dawson notes that although filtering and being open to insights from outside the filter may seem contradictory, they’re not; and it pays to do both. It’s a matter not of letting yourself be infinitely distracted, but of keeping your antennae up so that if some bits in the data stream do cue you to a possibility worth further investigation, you’re ready to zero in. There are a million leads we might serendipitously pursue as we amble along information highways and byways. In navigating these leads we must be both alert and disciplined.