Today I attended the first day of the Global Leadership Summit. It’s a great event that I would recommend to anyone. But the truth is I wasn’t that excited to go. Not because, I don’t have plenty to learn about leadership, I do. Rather, because I know what happens for most people at conferences including myself. We go and get all fired up. We leave with our chin up, our chest out, ready to take on the world. Then within two or three weeks, we’re hard pressed to remember even one or two takeaways from an event we initially thought to be life changing.

I mentioned this to a colleague of mine today and he told me this is what’s known as conference cynicism. I agree, but rather than be a cynic, I decided it’s time to find a solution to the problem.

So what’s the problem? In my estimation, it’s that most conferences consist of information overload. It’s the curse of being fed too much good information in a short period of time. How is that a curse? Unless you have the mental capacity of Einstein or Mozart, what most of us get at good conferences is just far too much for our brains to process on the aggregate in such a short time. Yet, we try and be a sponge and absorb everything. But then we hit the light of day (our organizational realities) and our sponge quickly shrivels up and dries out. Leaving us with no value captured or applied.

In essence, our minds shut down and say “no more, this is too much!” Then we lose it all and conferences can quickly become an act of futility. So how do we extract applicable value? I think there are two easy steps:

Re-acquaint yourself with your core values. Why? You know what they are, right? Well, they’re so inoculated in your DNA that you might just be taking them for granted. But they’re what guide your decisions day in and day out, so get yourself intimately in tune with them again before your next conference.

Recognize your capacity. Our lives are busy with a multitude of commitments. Ask yourself, how much time do I have to commit to any sort of behavioral change? Chances are it’s about 5-15 minutes a day. Be realistic.

Armed with these two pieces of personal data, you’ll be able to filter information at your next conference based on what you need to know and can actually apply. I’ll give you an example. Today, I decided to apply four words I heard from Jim Collins, “be rigorous, not ruthless.” That was my takeaway, four words. Did I hear hours of other great information? Yes. Can I apply it all? No. Those four words resonated with my core values and my capacity for application.

To some, four little words of application might seem like a waste of a day. To me, it’s genuine value add that will change my life forever.