In these difficult times we live in, when resources seem scarce, there is still one thing that is widely and abundantly available: information. According to the most recent statistics, the amount of information created annually by businesses and organizations, paper and digital combined, is growing at a rate of more than 65%. The amount of digital information being created in the world and distributed in emails, instant messages, blog posts, new Web pages, digital phone calls, podcasts and so on, will increase 10-fold over the next five years. The one fact that stands out is this: The growth of information is relentless.
Those who obviously struggle the most with information overload are people directly in its path. Information workers in fields as wide-ranging as education to entertainment are being constantly bombarded by a plethora of data that nearly paralyzes their psyche by its sheer quantity and its diversity. This is obviously a problem that we are going to have to come to grips with.
“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients,” says the Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon. “Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Our minds are being fragmented by having to process so much information at such a harried pace. No wonder we have a culture that is scattered with people suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. Could information overload, at the very least, be a contributing factor to this societal malady?
And what’s even more aggravating is that most information we are exposed to is irrelevant, time-consuming, negative and beyond our control. I challenge you to look at whatever you read or watch today and report back to me that it wasn’t at least two of the four. In the meantime, would you offer your insights, suggestions and/or experiences from dealing with too much paper and/or digital stuff?
I, for one, am on a mission. I am going on the offensive. I seek to make information my servant by refusing to allow it to become my master. Care to join me. Carpe diem!
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Interesting posts today.
Rick, I believe that the human brain is a marvelous organ that will eventually learn to adjust to the overwhelming onslaught of information that is hurled at it each day. This amazing organ will begin to quickly scan the material and systematically weed out what is unnecessary and/or uninteresting. In the interim, we can help our minds along by going through some of our inboxes, both electronic and old-fashioned, and deciding, for whatever reasons, what is acceptable and what is not. Before long, all it will take is a quick glance to know whether the information goes to “File 13.” We can also organize and overcome information clutter by using simple yet effective techniques.
For example, I know some people who walk straight to the trash can and shredder when they retrieve the day’s mail. Sorting becomes a quick process with bills going in one stack, other important mail going in another, and the infamous junk mail heading straight to the trash bin. The same thing can be done with electronic mail. All it takes is a few minutes time. We also need to be careful about the sites that we visit on the Internet and the tendency to, sometimes unknowingly, sign up for email communications from every Tom, Dick and Harry out in cyberworld. The information consumer has to take control of this situation because the information pushers will only increase in numbers and intensity.
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Thanks for this very good article! It’s excellent quality. I have been reading your website for a a while already and it’s the first time I comment. Keep up the great work and keep delivering high value!
Thanks, interesting perspective.
I suspect it’s not the information overload that actually gets you, it’s the organization underload.
We can handle truly massive amounts of information if it is organized in such a way that we can “chunk” it. Think of a phone book. Or the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress catalog. There’s an enormous amount of information there, but ordered so that we can find what we want on our own terms. The modern dilemma is that we deliberately allow ourselves to be surrounded by channels whose sole purpose is to distract us with every trivial new message rather than organize them into a form that we can peruse on our own terms.
Then we complain that we are getting too much information. The problem is that the economics of providing information controls the organization. News sources, advertisers, and gossip all compete for our attention with information we deliberately subscribe to, and pretty much through the same channels since we sensibly make every attempt to minimize the number of channels we have to attend.
My perspective is that the deleterious effects of information overload are not intrinsic to the volume of information per se but to its lack of structure due to the motivations behind its delivery and the manner in which it is delivered in order to compete for our attention.
The solution, adequate filtering of the channels we attend, fights an economic battle similar to the one that prevents manufacturers from developing working devices that record television programs that edit out commercials.
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Are You Suffering from Information Overload? http://ow.ly/2cXkc "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention"
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