The Information Overload Research Group is organizing a private one-day gathering of people who are leading the battle against Information Overload from a diversity of domains such as business, academia, technology, journalism, psychology, and research. If you share our passion, we’d love your attendance in San Francisco on Feb. 25, 2012. For more details, and registration information, go to http://bit.ly/Ag7kzK . See you there!
Although practically every organization is full of knowledge workers groaning under a deluge of email, it’s interesting to note that in many of them I run into a small minority of people who have things under control. I discover them on occasion when I explain the various solutions I can bring in, and someone says “Oh, but I already handle this by…” or “I never do that, I always…” The things they do vary; my favorite are the rare heroes who tell me they turn off all electronic devices after work hours, but there are many variations. Basically these people.. Read more
The proliferation of Blackberries and similar Smartphones has contributed significantly to the erosion of the Work/Life barrier, and has caused knowledge Workers to assume – erroneously, perhaps, but with conviction – that they must be on call 24×7. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly among my clients: people send and receive emails at all hours, and make a habit of checking their Blackberry every few minutes. Convincing these people to stop this addictive behavior is hopeless: I’ve run an experiment along these lines a few years back with a group of engineers and despite all exhortations to the contrary their behaviors.. Read more
I visited a doctor’s office and was surprised when his secretary pulled out a card – a ruled cardboard rectangle – to fill in my data. She had boxes of such patient cards in her office. A natural first reaction would be that this doctor must be pretty old and behind the times… Then I saw the doctor, and he was neither old nor behind – in fact he not only had a computer on his desk, but after a few minutes he whipped out an iPad, which he seemed very happy with and used with speed and effectiveness to.. Read more
I was discussing with a college student I’ve been advising whether it was a good or a bad thing that Google makes access to answers so easy. To my surprise, she opined that it’s a bad thing – because people who use Google to answer a question are more likely to forget the answer they find, whereas if they have to think the problem through and discover the answer for themselves they will remember it in the long term. An interesting insight from a Gen Y. But what struck me as remarkable was the fact that this is not a.. Read more
Email overload tends to go up the more senior you get; executive level managers can easily get a few hundred incoming work-related messages a day. This is so commonplace that they don’t even stop to complain about it; they either cope with the crushing stress or they delegate their Inbox processing to an assistant. I’ve known one glaring exception, however. I knew one senior manager, a VP of a hi-tech Fortune 500, who had a perennially near-empty inbox, and was receiving a paltry few dozen emails a day. I inquired as to how he got to this enviable state, and.. Read more
I’ve written before about various methods of ensuring freedom from interruption in the office; but pre-dating these there was the familiar “Do not Disturb” sign you hang on a hotel room door knob. These used to come in different colors, but they kept pretty much to the same form dictated by their function. A cardboard rectangle with hole… what was there to improve? Well, on my recent trip to Berlin I saw what someone felt is the next great leap in interruption-busters. The NH Hotel we stayed in had a switch inside the room that would light an electric sign.. Read more
I’ve pointed out that people don’t read the emails they’re replying to… and here is one more common manifestation of this: when you send someone an email asking two or three questions, you can be almost certain the reply will only address the first one. The recipient reads your mail, hits a question, responds to it and moves to another message. Then you need to write them another message to get the other items addressed (and create more overload for both parties). This being the universal case, there are steps you can take to defend against this tendency (besides sending.. Read more
The intent of email is to facilitate communication. Right? So – someone mails me to ask to meet Tuesday. I send a reply: I can’t meet Face to Face that day, so let’s do it by phone – can you do it at 3 PM? The reply I get says: If it’s FTF I can’t, can we do it on the phone? This happens all the time: you explicitly write something – and your correspondent acts as if it weren’t there. Can’t they read?! Truth is, they can read all right, but they have so many emails, so little time,.. Read more
Every year in October Basex, a New York based analyst company that is very active in the war on Info Overload, announces the observance of the worldwide Information Overload Awareness Day. This holiday, which is sponsored by our Information Overload Research Group, may not cure the problem that is exacting a growing toll on the effectiveness and sanity of knowledge workers worldwide, but it is a way to give some reach to the message that something needs to be done about it! This year the day is Thursday, Oct. 20, and I urge you to devote some time during that.. Read more
