The Information Factor
By Jay Deragon
We’ve all become information/content producers. More to the point, we have all become skilled in generating information than almost anyone has in managing it.
This makes it extremely difficult to figure out which information is useful and not wasteful or, even worse, destructive. The net result is we try to get our work done, but information seems to get in our way.
A single publishing company like Reuters produces an astonishing 27,000 pages of information per second. Whoops… it seems we forgot to ask the question…
“How much information can any one person manage at a given time?”
The total freedom and the complete accessibility of practically all information diluted information’s meaning and value to us.
Nobody ever taught us how to manage this overwhelming quantity of information effectively.
During the information age it was thought that information was power. And for a while it was – until the amount of information exploded and the Internet leveled the playing field (when it came to the access of information). Still today certain types of information can yield incredible wealth (like insider trading knowledge) but overall the worth of information has decreased dramatically.
A Reuters survey of 1,300 business people, revealed that two-thirds of the respondents’ personal relationships have been damaged because of excess information.
These respondents also experienced more tension at work and feel less satisfied with their jobs because of excess information. Forty percent feel important decisions get delayed and the ability to make good decisions is hammered by too much information.
Nonetheless, two-thirds of the respondents said they wanted even more information!
The psychologist David Lewis, who analyzed the findings of this survey, proposed the term “Information Fatigue Syndrome” to describe the resulting symptoms. “ Symptoms include paralysis of analytical capacity, increased anxiety, greater self-doubt, and a tendency to blame others. When people are faced with more information than they can process, they become unable to make decisions or take action.”
Other side-effects highlighted by Lewis include anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, and reduced attention span. The more information we try to suck in, the more we train ourselves to default to a shorter attention span. (read my post about The Attention Factor: http://jayderagon.com/blog/?p=94 )
Recent IDS research found the average knowledge worker spends up to 25% of their working time searching for information. Unless your highly disciplined it’s easy for the tie between information and action to be severed.
The passive activity of reading and surfing the internet can fool practically everyone into believing that actual work is being done.
The scary secret is this: if we’re not conscious of this hideous mind virus, we can endlessly delay having to do any real thinking whatsoever simply by stacking more and more bits of data in front of ourselves.
Now we’re being overloaded with request to join social networks, accept invitations from others, join groups, rss feeds from sources of information we like, news flashes before our eyes constantly….are you fatigued yet?
How productive are we in our information gathering task? Are we thinking or becoming dumb by the all the information we gather? Are we thinking or gather?
Until convergence happens and we usher in a true Relationship Economy our productivity is being killed by more information.
What say you?
About the Author: For the last three years I have been consumed with learning the emerging market of social networking. I have studied numerous platforms, features, functions and the markets behavior. My analysis and findings led me to believe that this space has tremendous potential for individuals, companies and entire industries. There is an art and science to social networking that requires constant learning as the market matures. To read more about my discoveries and findings check out my blog.
From 2000 to 2005 I was Chairman of XSVoice, a mobile application company that provided technology for live and on demand audio broadcast to mobile devices. We partnered with Sprint/Nextel and provided services to such media companies as NASCAR, Disney, ESPN, hundreds of internet radio stations, provided Homeland Security Alerts, Comedy broadcast, Horoscopes and a host of other premium mobile content. XSVoice was bought by a public firm in Jan of 2006.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Written by: Scott Frangos
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 2:40 am and is filed under Blogging Help, Web Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
