Reflections on Information Overload
Reflection is important to me. I found myself standing still for a moment today to witness the changing environment around me. It’s both terrifying and phenomenal when you attempt to be cognizant of the accessibility we have to an exponential stream of knowledge through social channels, which is now literally in our hands, all the time. This very blog has been given channels to feed you and other individuals that ordinarily would have been left in the dark just a few short years ago. I have developed more professional relationships (different than “friends” or “followers”) through social streams in the past 6 months than I have in the past decade, conservatively. Chalk some of it up to recent maturity of my professional development and realization of the importance of networking, but there is no denying that these social mediums have been anything short of life changing.
There’s a growing anxiety inside of me when it comes to information. I have news in the form of tweets, alerts, emails and blogs that are delivered to me in the thousands on a daily basis. It’s overwhelming. On one hand, it’s quite impossible to be saturated with all of this information and I can not afford to set aside the multiple hours it would require simply to take in this data. On the other hand, some of this information is crucial to me and I can’t afford not to have it. Information that has proven enriching to my life, to my job and the my future potential and development.
Sacrifice
One of the most important realizations I’ve come to grips with is the idea that I cannot receive it all. Social information has become a river. Put your toes in, fine – become slightly saturated. But decide to swim in it, and you become immersed with a stream of enlightenment for as long as you decide. However, our lives, both personal and professional, can’t survive a constant tread in this river. We have families, commitments and business ventures that don’t exist in this stream alone. A balance must come with sacrifice and accepting the idea that valuable information will not always find you.
Structure
I have surrounded myself with colleagues and like minded individuals that I am very proud of and who’s work, thoughts and ideas I have come to respect. I am enriched by these individuals daily and need this information for my own maintenance. For this, I have set up a varying set of filters. Subscribing to RSS feeds, managing a set of organized alerts and Google reader groups, setting up Twitter lists and monitoring hashtags, I’m able to gain some authority over an uncontrollable current.
Discipline
I recently started reading “Getting Things Done,” by David Allen, which, as the title alludes to, is an organizational guide for being as efficient as humanly possible. One rule in particular, which Allen calls the “two-minute rule,” has become critical to me. When I receive an email, see a post of interest, I have two minutes to act on it. It may be an immediate response to a client request, or simply putting it in to a task list and giving it a deadline. The idea is that our short term memory is becoming increasingly overloaded by information and without having discipline to manage these thoughts, many of them are neglected or even forgotten about. Having the discipline to prune your various streams of information on a daily basis is essential to being infused as much as you possibly can.
Have you experienced a similar effect from information overload? What strategies have you implemented to give you more control of that knowledge?
(image by verbeeldingskr8 via Flickr Creative Commons)
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Absolutely I have experienced this! I really relate, Eric. With regard to RSS feeds, I use Google Reader and iGoogle. I have 4 email addresses, and one by one I’m working on unsubscribing to every e-newsletter. I like the RSS feeds better, especially on my iGoogle page, as it’s like having my own newspaper. I can see it all at once and click on what I want, when I want. Each feed only shows 3 headlines at a time, so it never becomes overwhelming.
Information overload is a constant problem, especially for the tech savvy. The more we share tips on ways to manage info effectively, the better off we will all be. Thanks for another thoughtful post!
Eric,
The Economist this week has a special report on data overload; I haven’t read it yet but look forward to seeing what they have to say. However, I don’t fundamentally believe that information overload is a problem. There are plenty of tools and processes out there to help you filter down to what is important, so it is largely a matter of personal discipline, plus maintaining a confidence that you will see what is important to you because the ability to search through information has grown so powerful.
I am a big fan of the GTD system, and would say it has been a real life-changer for me. My colleagues at work are always amazed at my capacity to process information, and its largely because I am quickly able to organize and track commitments and references, using David Allen’s approach.
Hi Eric, I’m also a fan of GTD…but I have to admit have slipped on it and am now experience of feeling of losing control. Structure definitely helps as does getting over the panicky feeling that you might miss something if you don’t read all those blogs you subscribe to and just hit delete every now and again…of course not your blog!
Thanks for the reminder
Thanks Eric. I do in fact feel that I can be inundated with information and its true, I really have to use strategies to digest what it is that I’ve tasted, smelled, touched, heard, saw, and felt each day. There’s a lot going on around us and to observe it without doing anything (organizing, processing, digesting, etc.) it can be wasted information. Thanks for your posts. They’re very meaningful.
Eric:
Nice post.
Here’s a different spin on information overload.
I don’t walk into the library and feel information overload when there are hordes of books, magazines and articles begging to be read. I don’t log on to the Internet and immediately feel overwhelmed by the World Wide Web. I don’t go to Craig’s List and feel overwhelmed by all of the ads. As Clay Shirky says, “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”
I think we blame information overload for something else: the rapid rate of digital change. The speed of change in this digital world requires individuals to learn anew, face novel conditions, and adapt at a record pace. Learning never ends. “How we know something” has changed radically versus “how we used to know something.” What’s right today could be wrong tomorrow. Change is the constant. Our minds are not hard wired for constant change so we have to learn some adaption skills.
Today, we have to be able to unlearn something quickly or suffer the consequences. I believe that we mistakenly blame information overload as the reason we have to change. Today we have to learn how to judge reliable information and sources. It’s not so much about having to learn everything or read everything. It’s about filtering and judging which are important to our lives.
Unlearning is a trait we should all embrace.