I was a panelist in a webinar about email overload and was asked by the moderator whether I can describe some trends of the Information Overload problem over the years. Well – I’ve been leading the battle on information overload in the workplace for 18 years now, so at least I have a long span of years to seek trends in… and it was a good question. How has the Email Overload problem evolved since 1995?
My answer: I can give some bad news, and some – though not dramatic – good news.
The bad news is that Information Overload hasn’t gone away, and has actually grown worse due to the arrival of the ubiquitous handhelds – Blackberries and other Smartphones – that have made exposure to incoming mail and the ability to respond to it a 24×7 proposition. We had the IO problem in the past millennium, and we still have it, big time, in the new one.
The good news is that we’ve evolved and are making progress: I perceive a much greater maturity in the reaction of people and companies to the issue. This is seen at many levels:
- Individuals are taking well thought out corrective action about their email overload and mobile devices. In my lectures and conversations with knowledge workers I hear more people assert that they have good ways of coping with email and interruptions. These include some exemplary ideas, like automating shutdown of the Blackberry for the personal time after work hours; or applying sophisticated email client rules; or enacting other methods to safeguard their Life and their interaction with their families. These may still be a minority, but it’s growing.
- Organizations, who used to be in denial at first, also take more action. Senior managers set and role model norms and guidelines they would not have thought of a decade ago, leading to more delegation, better etiquette, and less overwhelm in their groups. Some companies are actually limiting use of email after hours. Others seek outside advice and support from the likes of myself.
- Software vendors, notably startups, are developing a growing array of tools for email classification and prioritization. I’ll be blogging about many in coming posts.
- The research community is also making strides, generating more experimental and theoretical insight, both about the old email overload problem and about the effects of the constant multitasking we see in the younger generation.
I share many of the coping strategies and solutions I hear about in this blog; check out the Individual Solutions and Organizational Solutions categories. They make me feel that we may not have licked the Information Overload problem, but we’re certainly beginning to address it in a more thoughtful manner. It’s a good step in the right direction!
What is your sense? Is there reason for hope?…
Nathan: What about information overload from other sources beyond email. Over at Bscopes, I’m focusing more on the overload that comes from trying to keep up with websites, blogs, rss feeds, etc. Do you see the same progress being made toward taming that? But with a later start? Or do you think that this is a different kind of a problem?
@Brad, I’d be interested in your observations about this aspect in your work.
My take is that while Social Networking is poised to be a new major source of overload, we are probably not there yet – email and interruptions still take a greater toll, and may remain so for a long time.
One sense in which email is far worse than RSS feeds and Facebook is that they don’t share the implied expectation of email, that you have to “clear it all up”. With email, you strive to read every incoming message; with a newsreader where you track 200 feeds, you just skim the latest headlines and read what you like. Twitter and Facebook are even more like that. Hence, if you go on vacation without email access you dread the accumulation that will await you on your return, while tweets and social media updates are just water under the bridge – you pick up where you return to activity. Much less stressful!
@Nathan. I agree that there are differences. But from what I’ve seen most people don’t make the emotional distinction that you do. They feel the same guilt and anguish on returning from vacation about the unread blog posts, web sites and rss feeds. There’s a major difference in the types of actions expected and the give-and-take nature of the replies. But the emotional overload is still there.
That’s troubling. I often advise people to resist going in that direction with respect to RSS reading…
Interesting conversation Brad & Nathan. I haven’t thought about this distinction between email and information overload too much before, probably because I group the two as one. But now that I do think about it, I think they are different for some of the reasons Nathan points out. Email replies an action if it’s with another party. It’s a combination of consumption and a reciprocal action for the non-no reply emails. Interesting nuance as I believe pure information overload is best handled through building better digital habits, whether that comes from oneself or from a tool/platform that encourages more productive/efficient consumption. Regardless, I think people can start to benefit from one tactic applied to both email and information overload: scheduled batches. I check email in four scheduled batches throughout the day and my startup called Skim.Me is building a platform to encourage scheduled and timed browsing sessions throughout the day. Overload comes from the constant checking/refreshing of both mediums. One still needs to do some curation to make sure the hose is of ideal output. My two cents!
@Clinton: Batching and avoidance are wonderful strategies to manage the interrupt driven aspect of information overload. But for things other than email, where the total volume is beyond what you can handle even in separate batches, then there is the need for what you called “curation”. Some way of knowing what is hot in the list of things you really want to try and get to. A way to find the needles in the blogosphere haystack.
@Clinton, I like your thinking, and certainly favor batching (see this post)!
Your product sounds intriguing, but being so cloaked in secrecy I can hardly assess it… can you tell us more?