Information overload is not just a problem.
It is the single most debilitating problem human beings face at this moment in history.
In fact, it's because of my inabilty to tolerate any more information overload that I'm pushing friends, family, and clients out of my E-mail box and into Google Plus.
In 25 years of exploration and experimentation, using Google Plus and my simple social homesite here at BeingSocial.us is the best way I've discovered to drastically reduce cognitive overload - while remaining an active participant in the modern world.
With every passing day, I'm finding new social power using G+ as a unified messaging platform instead of going nuts chasing back and forth between my email box and Facebook and Twitter and a half-dozen other social sites and services.
From one place, I can use G+ to send private messages - like email only better. I can "blog" about things I care about most - by making public posts - and get read by many more people than I have been so far here on BeingSocial.Us. I can also send "newsletters" to groups of people with whom I share a specific interest (by making circle posts). Experimenting with G+ is totally changing the way I participate in the information economy - in a joyful and powerful way.
If you take a look at my page on G+, you'll get a peek at what I mean. (You can't see my private messages and hangouts and unless I've circled you, you can't see my circle posts, but you can see my public posts and a lot more.)
By doing almost all my messaging here in my social homesite and from the unified platform on Google Plus, I'm able to
1) remain clear about what I care about,
2) keep my focus on my values and goals, and
3) make timely, valuable contributions to others.
Because I've organized my G+ circles and made careful decisions about how I add new connections, I'm stay well-informed by my very smart friends - but never over-my-head in information or trivia.
As I tell clients, for 25 years, all the information in the world has been liberated from libraries. We're swimming in it 24/7 now. And what we need most from one another is help making sense of what's changing around us so we can take action from a place of integrity - instead of a place of crisis.
(c) Juliana Coutinho
When we "make friends" in social media, we're actually connecting our hearts and minds with others who care about what we care about. And this frees us to use one another's hearts and minds to co-process new information.
Just like having two processor capability in our computers speeds up information processing, when we make friends with smart people in social media, we speed up our ability to make sense of changing circumstances and take action when we need to. And rest when we don't.
In fact, when we're mindful about who we're "friending," being social is T-H-E smartest and fastest way for us to cut down on information overload.
Like the Beatles sang, "I get by with a little help from my friends."
If your experience using social media isn't yet helping you cut down on information overload, you may need some help rethinking the way you're using Facebook and Twitter and the Mama of all social sites - Google Plus.
I promise, "being social" has nothing to do with succumbing to sensory overload.
Being social online can be the easiest and fastest way to get yourself up above the noise - so you can think and act from a place of peace.
The price of tolerating information overload is simply too high to continue to pay. This piece from Infoengineering says it all:
Information Overload is an increasing problem both in the workplace, and in life in general. Those that learn to deal with it effectively will have a major advantage in the next few years.
Information Overload is when you are trying to deal with more information than you are able to process to make sensible decisions. The result is either that you either delay making decisions, or that you make the wrong decisions.
It is now commonplace to be getting too many e-mails, reports and incoming messages to deal with them effectively.
The Information Overload Age
The first recorded use of the phrase “information overload” was used by the futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970, when he predicted that the rapidly increasing amounts of information being produced would eventually cause people problems.
Although people talk about “living in the information age,” written information has been used for thousands of years. The invention of the Printing Press a few hundred years ago made it possible to distribute written information to large amounts of people. However, it is only with the advent of modern computers that the ability to create, duplicate and access vast amounts of information has created Information Overload amongst the general population.
The root of the problem is that, although computer processing and memory is increasing all the time, the humans that must use the information are not getting any faster. Effectively, the human mind acts as a bottleneck in the process.
Not “Sensory Overload”
Information Overload needs to be differentiated from “Sensory Overload.” This is when your mind is bombarded with images, sounds and sensations that overload the brain.
The brain can actually handle tens of millions of signals from our senses every second. Think of the number of light sensors within the eye, and equate this to the resolution of a digital camera (and the corresponding file size of the photos it produces). Then include the thousands of touch-sensitive areas of the body, and the range of our hearing. But we can still deal with all of this, because the brain has had tens of millions of years of evolution to deal with this.
Compare those tens of millions of years to the few thousand years we’ve been dealing with information such as talking and writing. Our brains are still learning to deal with this, so we can only process a very small amount of it at a time.
Causes
Information Overload is now commonplace in offices around the World. Some of the causes include:
- The widespread access to the Web
- The ease of sending e-mail messages to large numbers of people
- As information can be duplicated for free, there is no variable cost in producing more copies – people send reports and information to people who may need to know, rather than definitely need to know.
- Poorly created information sources (especially online), which:
- are not simplified or filtered to make them shorter
- are not written clearly, so people have to spend more time understanding them
- contain factual errors or inconsistencies – requiring further research
How the Problem Spreads
In an office, the problem of Information Overload spreads like a virus. If one person is suffering information overload, they tend not to process the information they are handling very well. Rather than summarising a report or document, they just pass on the whole thing to everyone in the office.
Now, the rest of the office must wade through 80 pages to find the few key pieces of information that are relevant to their jobs and the decisions they need to make.
Solutions
Although there is no simple solution to the problem of Information Overload, there are some things that can be done to reduce the problem.
These include:
- Spending less time on gaining information that is nice to know and more time on things that we need to know now.
- Focusing on quality of information, rather than quantity. A short concise e-mail is more valuable than a long e-mail.
- Learning how to create better information (this is what Infogineering is about). Be direct in what you ask people, so that they can provide short precise answers.
- Single-tasking, and keeping the mind focused on one issue at a time.
- Spending parts of the day disconnected from interruptions (e.g. switch off e-mail, telephones, Web, etc.) so you can fully concentrate for a significant period of time on one thing.
