Reining in the Information Deluge

Mindjet REIGNING IN THE INFORMATION DELUGE 52% of U.S. workers strongly or somewhat agree to the statement, "The quality of my work suffers at times because I can't sort through the information that I need quickly enough." 57% of U.S. workers strongly or somewhat agree to the statement, "Since the economic downturn, the amount of information that I have to process at work has significantly increased." 72% or somewhat agree to the statement, "I would be more productive if I didn't have to switch back and forth between applications to get my work done." of U.S. workers strongly 91% of U.S. workers say they sometimes "delete or discard work information without fully reading it." Source: LexisNexis (October 2010) - International Workplace Productivity Suruey White Collar Highlights The average UK employee deals with just 36 emails per day but still Searching the Internet for info they've seen but can't find costs UK businesses two weeks of time and over £1,200 65.2% of UK employees stated that their work is negatively affected by the amount of data they receive. misses one third. per year for every employee. Source: Mindjet - Drowning in Droplets of Data WORKFLOW Interruptions caused by information overload cost U.S. companies $650 billion a year INFORMATION Source: Basex - Information Ouerload: We Haue Met the Enemų and He Is Us wwwm A Temple University study found that as you give people more and more information, they "reach cognitive and information overload". Activity falls off in the part of the brain responsible for decision making and control of emotions, and they begin to make bad decisions and stupid errors." INFORMATION Source: Angelika Dimoka, Director of Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University, quoted in The Daily Beast (27 February 2011) I Can't Think! COPING STRATEGIES Prioritizing Multitasking Satisticing Refusing "Organizing and approaching tasks by importance" "Carrying out several tasks at once" "Being satisfied with "good enough" solutions" "Identifying tasks that don't need to be done" Limiting Queuing Delegating Shifting "Avoiding the mindset that more data is better" "Getting tasks ready to be completed later" "Identifying tasks to give to others" "Perceiving situations more positively by accepting them as "part of the job" Escaping Altering Filtering "Keeping distractions at bay so that you can work without disturbance (e.g. by turning off your phone, or closing the office door)" "Working in a different environment or working in a different way to change the way important and helpful information, and you perceive a task (e.g. working in a coffee shop, or reading paper documents rather than on computer screen)" "Paying attention to just the most leaving aside any other sources" Source: Joseph Ruff, Haruard Graduate School of Education's Learning Innovations Laboratory - Information Ouerload: Causes, Symptoms and Solutions, quoted in Workplace Psychology (18 May 2011) Information Ouerload-When Information Becomes Noise" JESS3