Blog. Insight, issues, opinions and productivity solutions

The decay to the rest state

Posted on July 4, 2010 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Happy independence day to our American friends!… Today I want to draw your attention to a phenomenon that is quite familiar to us physicists, but has a place in driving solutions to information overload as well. I refer to the decay to a rest state. In physics, this is often seen when a system is pushed up to a high energy state: it will lose energy and “decay” to its state of equilibrium. Thus, a mug of hot coffee – a critical item in a knowledge worker’s routine – will lose heat and eventually reach room temperature if you don’t.. Read more

Facebook and Email Overload reduction

Posted on June 28, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Of course Facebook can do a lot of different things for different people; and different people eye it with enthusiasm, hostility, and anything in between. Some say it can consume hours each day, and thus reduce your productivity; others say it will eventually replace email in the workplace (as it is already in process of doing in the world of Gen Y and those who want to communicate with them). We’ll see in the interesting next few years… For my part, I find Facebook a pleasant way to keep in touch – lightly – with my friends. My personal strategy.. Read more

How to avoid email mania without annoying your customers

Posted on June 18, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

Here is a question I was asked by an attendee at one of my lectures. I was teaching the importance of not using email like Instant Messenger, of reading it only a few times a day in preset slots. The guy wanted to know how can he do this, when his customers expect him to respond instantly? Won’t they be annoyed (to use a mild term)? He would prefer to suffer than to upset his customers! He certainly had a point. In my experience if you cut your email reading just like that, cold turkey, some of your correspondents will.. Read more

Reading email or Understanding email?

Posted on June 12, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms, Individual Solutions

Considering the amount of time we all spend reading incoming email, it’s amazing how little we understand what we read. That reading and understanding are two different things is clear; this is why legal documents use verbiage like “I confirm that I have read and understood the terms & conditions bla bla bla”… but it’s amazing how easy it is to read a mail message and totally miss large chunks of it. People glance at the message, form an impression of what it means to them, and move on – after all, they may have 100 others waiting to be.. Read more

Five characteristics of Information Overload in Small Businesses

Posted on June 6, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

Last week I lectured on Information Overload at a seminar for small business entrepreneurs. This is a very diverse, lively and interesting population segment, brimming with energy and originality. I had an interesting time talking to people making a living from areas as different as marriage (and, alas, divorce) counseling, organic food production, web site development, optometry, software coding and interior design. These people were young and old, male and female, technically trained or not; but they had one thing in common: all were victims of massive Information Overload. Which is strange, in a way: you’d think someone running a.. Read more

Do not Disturb!

Posted on May 30, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

My Nokia E71 smartphone has a selection of available specialized profiles, of which the most useful one is probably “Silent”, for use in meetings and theatres. Useful, yet I use it with trepidation. I fear the Silent profile because I KNOW, I’m practically certain, that I will forget to turn it off when the meeting is over, only to discover later an accumulation of “missed calls”. The obvious solution, which seems to elude the good designers at Nokia (and at the makers of every other Smartphone I’ve used to date), is to implement a profile of “silent for one hour”,.. Read more

At last – a meeting cost calculator!

Posted on May 24, 2010 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Meetings consume precious time like a SUV guzzles gas. I remember that Andy Grove, Intel’s legendary co-founder, once wrote that you need half a dozen approvals to buy a $5000 copier but can call a meeting of 20 managers – whose time costs far more – without anyone raising an eyebrow. The fact is, the time cost of meetings is enormous and usually overlooked. Now, time spent on a well led, interactive, lively meeting is very well spent; but all too often meetings are long, boring and useless, especially when everyone is doing email… and when they drag on, or.. Read more

Yes it IS Information Overload, Clay Shirky, not only Filter Failure

Posted on May 18, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

You can see it on Twitter every day, a year and a half after he coined it: Clay Shirky’s famous Filter Failure meme, “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure”. It’s catchy. It’s thought-provoking. And yet, I believe, it’s also misleading. This meme started with an excellent keynote Clay gave at Web 2.0 Expo NY in late 2008, and I strongly recommend you watch the video if you haven’t already: it’s very insightful and interesting. If you’re too overloaded to spend 23 minutes, some of the ideas are also in a CJR interview here. To sum it up, Clay says.. Read more

Meetings: Shorter is Better

Posted on May 13, 2010 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Meetings consume a big portion of the knowledge worker’s week, and are notoriously unproductive (small wonder, what with everybody doing email). Improving meeting effectiveness is therefore a big deal; I’ve seen it done right with great positive impact, and the converse too. It takes some doing… but there is one way meetings can be improved immediately: by abandoning the tyranny of the one-hour slot. Most meetings in the world are set for an hour or two, simply because we all live by the clock, and it is calibrated in hours. This is also reflected in most calendars, whether paper or.. Read more

Online Silence and Trust

Posted on May 8, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I lectured at the Info 2010 conference this week, where we had a special track dedicated to Information Overload, with many excellent speakers. One of these was Dr. Yoram Kalman, a key contributor to IORG and a long time friend, who presented his research into Online Silence. This is the phenomenon, so familiar to us all, where you send an email to a person and no reply comes back. After a few days you get restless and resend; often this will remain of no avail. Then you phone the recipient, and perhaps leave a message urging they look for your.. Read more