Absorb Information and Applying It - Managing Information and Communication Overload
Information can only become knowledge when it's applied. Before you can absorb and apply yesterday's intake, however, the explosion of new information floods your receptive capacity. Such constant exposure to the daily information and media shower leaves each of us incapable of ingesting, synthesizing, or applying the data before tomorrow's shower.
The eruption of information renders us over-stimulated. The more information you try to ingest, the faster the "clock races," and your sense of breathing space is strained.
As yet, few people are wise information consumers. Curiously, there is only one party who controls the volume, rate, and frequency of information that you're exposed to. That person is you. The notion of "keeping up" is illusory, self-defeating, frustrating and harmful. The sooner you give it up the better you'll feel.
Step out of the Information Shower - Managing Information and Communication Overload
As writer Kevin Donahue observes: The managing editor of MensHealth.com, a married father of two whose job requires him to be plugged in 24-7, began weaning himself from his cell phone. Davids Swink's goal was to leave office stress in the office. “Make your smartphone work for you, rather than be at its mercy,” recommended Swink, chief creative officer of Strategic Interactions.
He suggested putting the phone in a drawer, turning off the ringer, and setting up a regular time every couple of hours to check and answer e-mail for 5 minutes.
After doing Swink concluded, “I needed more like 10 minutes per session! But overall, I felt cleansed, less stressed, and was more engaged with my family. Those mini-interruptions – not just work, but Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail from friends – really take a toll!” -
When Information Deceives - Managing Information and Communication Overload
Courtroom attorneys are now employing forensic animation to illustrate to jury members in less than a minute what traditionally could have required days on end of experts, explanation, and testimony. Judges, meanwhile, are predisposed to allowing any evidence deemed reliable if it shortens the length of a trial.
While such costly and impactful forensics DVDs can aid in illuminating the facts in a case, there is an inherent danger when lawyers act as “film” producers. By altering lighting, camera angles, color, or visual tone, the jury can be lead in one direction or completely in another. Should multi-million dollar courtroom cases be decided based on cinematics?
When Rules Last Forever - Managing Information and Communication Overload
Once a rule gets in place it's very difficult to eliminate it even though the original reasons for its generation are long gone, according to author Roger von Oech. His prime example:
In the 1870s the leading manufacturer of typewriters at the time received complaints that too many of the typewriter keys were sticking together if the operator went too fast. In response to this, the company produced the QWERTY type keyboard -- a configuration standard on all keyboards -- to slow down operators so that the keys wouldn't jam together.
Today, technology permits us to produce typewriter keyboards that can operate much faster than any human could possibly type but the QWERTY configuration still dominates and likely will for the foreseeable future.
The nugget for us all: introduce new rules, new regulations, and new procedures carefully, and monitor their long term effectiveness.
Sleep Aids Performance - Managing Information and Communication Overload
Much of our current knowledge about sleep, and what happens when you don’t get enough, grows out of clinical observation... The results aren’t encouraging for those Type A’s who boast about getting by on five hours night. “Despite what they claim and believe about themselves, they are impaired” according to David Dinges, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology in the Department of Psychiatry, and Associate Director of the Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Is the constant crushing burden of information and communication overload dragging you down? By the end of your workday, do you feel overworked, overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted? Would you like to be more focused, productive, and competitive, while remaining balanced and in control?
If you're continually facing too much information, too much paper, too many commitments, and too many demands, you need Breathing Space.
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