I asked again and you the readers of Home Office Warrior came through. Below are the tips provided by some of you on how to deal with information overload. Thanks once again. If there is a specific question you would like to “ask the readers,” please drop me an email at grant@homeofficewarrior.com.

Lois from Home Base Holidays had this to say:

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 found it refreshing this week when I unsubscribed from 5 different ezines I was receiving. I also did some spring cleaning of my RSS reader.

Lois goes on to state:

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!

Rocket Matter’s Larry Port provided these handy ideas:

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.

I think I have convinced Larry to join the twitter landslide. I will watch for his following of my twitter.

Susan Cartier Liebel, a regular commenter on HOW and publisher of Build a Solo Practice, LLC had without a doubt the most interesting suggestion.

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.

Technotheory’s very own Jared Goralnick provided these two links. Escape from information overload and just read what you want to. It works and Walk away if its not worth it: the real first step to getting it done. Two great post Jared, thanks.

Carmel from Quant gave us this:

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.

Yellow Highlighter Virtual Assistance blogger, Meredith Eisenberg had these great tips:

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.

All of the tips are great and just goes to show the quality of the readers of Home Office Warrior. Be watching for the next installment of “Ask the Readers.”