Strategies for dealing with information overload

Information junkie that I am, one of my never-ending challenges is dealing with the tsunami of information crashing down on my head every day. It is partly my fault: I know I sign up for too many newsletters and too many feeds. But each of them gave me something of value that inspired me to sign up, and you never know from which and when you'll get a new gem.

I've read and implemented many of the ideas about taming e-mail overload (e.g. only check it a couple of times a day, use meaningful subject lines, etc.) but there's far more than e-mail at issue now. Even using tools such as popurls, customized iGoogle home pages, and other types of feeds, I find that I don't even have time to read all the subject lines, let alone deal with Twitter, Linked In and other sources that keep feeding me with more links to follow.

I've just finished reading a PhD thesis by L. Becker (citation below) on the topic. She makes the point that organizations need to rethink some of their processes to deal with information overload. One particularly strong point she makes is that we've overdone the shift away from administrative assistants, with the result that managers now spend way too much time doing tasks that could and should be done by admin staff. Just because a manager can do something, doesn't mean that he or she should. Does it really make sense to have someone earning $50/hr doing a job that could be done by someone at $15/hr?

Some of her other recommendations include:

- evaluate software products for ease of use before imposing them on staff

- "use extreme caution when implementing several new software products that will impact a single user group."

- consider whether the difficulty getting software products to work together will end up making tasks more complex rather than simpler. Even though a piece of software may make a sub-task simpler, if it has to be incorporated into other systems to complete the entire task, the time needed to do that can swamp the benefit.

- "Limit the number of organizational priorities" and "avoid placing a sense of urgency on all priorities".

- When setting priorities consider "organizational capacity (intellectual bandwith" to implement the priorities.

I'd love to hear your ideas about other ways to combat information overload while still staying on top of all the important news. And for how we can convince employers about the need to rethink their systems.



_____________
Becker, L.. The impact of organizational information overload on leaders: Making knowledge work productive in the 21st century. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Idaho, United States -- Idaho. Retrieved September 29, 2009, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text.(Publication No. AAT 3363308).