Peer to Peer Magazine

Recognizing and Reducing Information Overload more frequency. But just what exactly is information overload and what impact does it have on individuals and organizations? Imagine a day that involves taking in information from: 3 text messages, 100 work and 28 personal e-mail messages, 83 e-group (listserv) messages, 47 Twitter updates, 10 Facebook messages along with hundreds of status updates, the daily newspaper, satellite news radio to and from the office, the evening news with commercials in between and phone calls (cell, home and work) several times a day. Overwhelmed yet? Probably. Yet this is a typical scenario for many, and is a perfect example of information overload. A In his 1970 landmark book, Future Shock, Alvin Toffler popularized the term “information overload,” which refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions when he or she is confronted with too much information. Toffler claimed, “When the individual is plunged into a fast and irregularly changing situation, or a novelty-loaded context . . . his predictive accuracy plummets. He can no longer make the reasonably correct assessments on which rational behavior is dependent.” Generating More Than We Can Manage Think about the information sources listed earlier and how they contribute to sensory overload. In many instances, information is coming from duplicative sources. Many have now established separate e-mail accounts for both “personal” and “quasi-personal yet not quite work-related” e-mail. We have e-groups, online subscriptions and RSS feeds. Many professional organizations of which we are members have not only a website, but a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter presence as well. Using PDAs or smartphones for only voice and e-mail is no longer adequate. Need something at your fingertips? There’s an app for that! The Internet is replacing the use of an encyclopedia or other printed media for research. Access to information is easy, fast and overwhelming. Most of us know that we are subjected to far more information than we could possibly ever process. The Basex s we move farther into an era of enhanced technology and an evolving culture that expects everything (and subsequently everyone) to be “better, faster, smarter,” we hear the term “information overload” expressed with more and report “Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us” states, “We have become far more proficient in generating information than we are in managing it, and we have also built technology that creates new information without our intervention.” The same study shows that for those working in knowledge environments, approximately 2.1 hours a day is consumed by interruptions. Add interruptions to the deluge of information, and it’s amazing that we can complete anything. “At the point that we are confronted with more than we can It has been said that people can only keep seven items at once in their working memory and that there are limits on the speed with which the brain can process these items. At the point that we are confronted with more than we can process, we experience information overload. Information overload can be managed but it’s a skill that takes practice. It’s common to mindlessly ingest information, but we are best served when we exercise discretion in what data we digest and how often we seek it out. Considering the process, we experience information overload.” Consequences What are the consequences of not managing our information? From an organizational perspective, studies have shown that information technology has the propensity to diminish workplace efficiency. It is assumed that in order to be successful, one must be adept at multitasking. With today’s technology, that often means participating in a conference call, while at the same time checking e-mail, responding to a text message and sending an instant message to a colleague. We have been conditioned to believe that if we somehow fall short of accomplishing several things at once, we are inept or inadequate. However, allowing ourselves to succumb to information overload leads to making mistakes, experiencing difficulty relating details to a bigger issue, wasting time, and needing more time to make a decision. Reduced efficiencies and information fatigue are just a couple of the effects that can result from exposure to too much information. In our quest for just that right piece of information, we sometimes forget the age old secret of trusting our instincts. We can find ourselves experiencing “paralysis by analysis.” Lack of personal interaction is also becoming more and more prevalent as we choose to e-mail our neighbors in the next offices rather than visit them in person. Not only are we inundated with new information, we can overwhelm ourselves with information we already have. We need to be selective in what we choose to keep, Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 61

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