Good Saturday morning everyone!! This is the second “Ask the Readers” post I have done. And in this one I am only asking for 5 tips. Specifically, 5 tips for dealing with information overload. If we get more, my followup post will include more.
Why information overload you ask. We are hammered with all kinds of information now-a-days. From a huge number of emails on a daily basis. An overloaded RSS reader. Too many good web pages to count. And now we are dealing with the amount of information coming to us from twitter.
How do you deal with:
What is the best way to deal with it? I am once again turning to the readers of Home Office Warrior for the answers. And as BEFORE, I will post your comments and ideas in a followup post with a link to your own blog or Web site.
Please send your comments to this post with your ideas on how to deal with “information overload.”
Categories: Tips for Working at Home, Work-Life Balance
6 Comments
Very relevant topic! I increasingly need to be more selective about what I spend time scanning or reading in depth. I still subscribe to blogs, ezines, etc that are of interest and should be useful for my business. However, I am now much quicker to unsubscribe if most of the information is not very relevant or if it is too frequent.
I would far sooner receive one or two useful communications a week (i.e. an amount I can cope with) than to be bombarded every day. I know that blogs need to be kept updated but, unfortunately, some bloggers think this means they have to publish a new post every day even if they don’t have the time to spend to provide thoughtful and useful information. Less can often be more!
Cheers!
Oddly enough, I subscribed to LifeHacker to try to figure out these issues and ended up drowning in their blog posts.
What I find useful, though I don’t always follow this, is to rope off time for these kind of activites. I check email in the morning and after lunch (unless they are support emails which we jump on).
I use Google reader to fly through RSS, which I do once a day if I’m lucky, or batch up for the weekend.
Facebook and LinkedIn, I check a couple of evenings a week or when I get an invite.
Twitter I am terrified of for this very reason. I have enough information to managed without getting tweated or whatever it’s called. So I’ve stayed away for now.
Oddly enough, when I have information overload I do what I did in law school: I read a novel. When I was studying for the bar I actually decompressed by reading more than three novels a week. It isn’t the brain over working…it’s what it is working on, I find. And I’m one of those who can never shut her brain off..so I have to redirect it’s efforts.
Hi Grant,
I try to read less and quit more.
Sorry for the links…but I think that sort of efficiency is exactly in line with the type of comment you’re looking for
# Too much email.
I found Clear Context helpful when using Outlook. I am now using GMail and RTM. Using the basic principles of GTD really seems to work. I have an Inbox Challenge running on Twitter you can follow (www.twitter.com/quantie)
# Too many RSS feeds
I am trying to keep feeds to a manageable number so I unsubscribe to some when I add new ones. I try to weigh up time v value on each feed. (For Lifehacker, only taking top stories).
# Too much snail mail
Get electronic bills for everything possible. Set up automatic payments. The amount of paperwork that arrives the kids school is shocking. Current week’s newsletter goes up in the kitchen. Everything else is actioned on immediately (if less than 2 minutes aka GTD). Reference material is scanned and the rest discarded. The Fujistu ScanSnap is one of the best tools I have in the office. I am a terrible paper hoarder and never get around to filing but since getting the Scansnap my office looks great and I feel in control. Buy a scanner.
Two things that help me:
1. Colored labels in gmail. I have it set up so emails from cients get their own colored label. That way, I can see at a glance if I have any important emails.
2. Turning email and twitter off when I’m in focused work mode. I get so much more done.