This will be post #1 of 2 posts on today's information overload problem and how we can cope. Part 2 is here.
Information overload is no longer a joke. For those who suffered with this affliction, it never was, but now that there are real numbers attached to the problem, it has finally prompted companies to take action. Those numbers come from a recent study by a research company called Basex and they are to the tune of $650 billion in wasted productivity. Ironically, the time wasted comes from use of applications and technologies that are supposed to make workers more productive. Unfortunately, they seem to have the opposite effect.
This $650 billion dollar problem made the headlines this week, getting write-ups in both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Thanks to a research study by Basex, we now have new data on productivity in the workplace. The findings reveal that a typical information worker checks his or her email more than 50 times per day, uses IM 77 times, and visits 40+ web sites. These numbers were calculated by tracking software installed on the machines of the 40,000 people taking part in the study.
Often, workers are dropping high-level tasks to deal with mundane, low-priority tasks that come through via these unnecessary interruptions. The end result is fractured attention where the big loss comes from the time it takes to recover from the interruption and get back to work.
Although we should know better, it may already be too late for us; we're conditioned creatures who are drawn to these distractions. A pop-up alerting us to new email? We must check it. A flashing IM window? Just try to ignore it. These "productivity" apps, it seems, by their very nature, have been designed to steal our focus.
Big tech companies are worried, too. They've put together a group called IORG (Information Overload Research Group) whose founders include IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and a dozen other companies and academic institutions.
This group's mission is to:
"Conduct research, help define best practices, contribute to the creation of solutions, share information and resources, offer guidance and facilitation, and help make the business case for fighting information overload."
It will be interesting to see what they come up with as far as solutions because they're certainly not the first to attempt a solution to the problem. Earlier this year, we covered five methodologies to deal with email overload, which included popular techniques like the GTD method and the 4-Hour Workweek Method. Despite numerous proposed solutions such as these, no one has really hit the sweet spot when it comes to providing real solutions that work for everyone.
For social media addicts, which likely includes readers of this blog, the problem can be even worse. In addition to having our focus pulled away by productivity applications like email and IM, we're also pulled in a number of different directions as well - checking FriendFeed, Twitter, social networks, and more. (I wonder how many billions of dollars we waster per year?)
For many people, these distractions are overpowering. No matter the time commitment, social media addicts can't help but spend entire chunks of their day online playing with the new, shiny internet toys. When we profiled several social media addicts earlier this year on Twitter, we discovered that a good many people spent several hours - even as many as 10 hours per day - online, immersed in the web and social media tools.
It seems we're at a crossroads - there's so much information, but not enough filters. We can either drown in the lost productivity time sink that is the internet or we can swim...swim for our lives. The question is: how?
Click here to read Part 2 of this post
Image Credit: Autoroute: Mzlle Biscotte
Comments
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Most web 2.0 companies do not make any sense to me. I have visited several web app thru RWW, and very few of them have made me go back to them twice, yeah the number is 2. I don't understand how on earth they make VCs pay millions of dollars for a blip???
Posted by: End-User | June 18, 2008 6:37 AM
Completely agree with you there.
Posted by: loveguitarncomp | June 18, 2008 6:42 AM
The key idea for information-sharing is to build an architecture that helps users to find an equilibrium in awareness, i.e. where they are not kept on the dark, nor are they flooded with information. I believe current social networks such as Facebook and Twitter do not provide the appropriate mechanisms for reaching this equilibrium, although they too are evolutions from prior art. I believe ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards) is the next step. ISS allow users to discover, subscribe, aggregate and syndicate information within their social network in an intuitive and non-obtrusive way, reaching an equilibrium of awareness.
Posted by: Nick Vidal | June 18, 2008 7:08 AM
I think there is a struggle between regular job tasks and professional development. If someone has to be a reference in its workplace on what the new trends are, they either have to do it during their job time, or on their own time at home.
Sometimes, employees choose to become an "expert" on their own without discussing with their supervisor, which might be a larger problem.
Posted by: Mathieu Plourde | June 18, 2008 7:15 AM
"Please stayed tuned for post #2 on this topic, continued later today..."
You have to love the irony of that last sentence. I will be eagerly checking Google Reader every 10 minutes until then.
Posted by: fineartdavid.com
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June 18, 2008 7:15 AM
Technology is to blame. Technology firms *should* be working on the problem, not just on the next web 2.0 website to waste even more time.
TechCrunch wrote a post asking, where is the startup that is going to be my information filter?
An approach that has some merit is to organize *everything*, then filter only the most relevant information for each user, based on both explicit and some implicit (permitted) user actions, and set visibility options so the really important stuff can be elevated.
We should be able to build tools so that even the biggest information junkies can still keep all their information sources without drowning in information overload.
Posted by: Joe Lichtenberg | June 18, 2008 7:19 AM
To paraphrase Gandhi, we seem to be dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will have to be disciplined. Sure, there are tips that people can follow, there are architectures that can be deployed, but as I note in a post on Mission to Learn (http://tinyurl.com/3l5cw3 ) today, "the only thing that can keep us from too much of a good thing on the Web is ourselves." - Jeff
Posted by: Jeff Cobb | June 18, 2008 7:38 AM
This is a big deal (got here from Twitter!).
We're in a transitional period now. These problems can't go on forever; I'm hoping that as we learn about the pitfalls, we'll get better tools that help us be more focused and less distracted.
It's ok that we're playing with these shiny new gizmos, but the problem of addiction is really coming to light.
Workers aught to be on the web in order to keep current and refine their skills. But it shouldn't cost billions of dollars. That's the cost of a war.
For now, the best solution is to set your own limits (use an alarm clock that you have to walk to in order to stop). Also, a simple practice of sitting down to just meditate a few times a day helps.
For all of our technology, nothing beats good old fashioned GTD: plan your day, write lists, focus, turn off IM & email alerts, and don't click every link you see and don't think just because it's brand spanking new that it means something. In fact, assume it's BS.
Posted by: Phil Baumann | June 18, 2008 7:40 AM
Great timing - i'm blogging about our efforts in this area:
http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=237
Posted by: eric norlin | June 18, 2008 7:48 AM
I adjusted several years ago to the fact that I don't have time to be the coolest geek on campus. I'm not paid for it, anyway.
I filter most new info -- via email or news reader -- much like I filter postal mail. I toss most.
If a new tool doesn't stand to help me on the job, I pass it up. For example, I don't use Twitter. Ha! But I do use RWW (& Techmeme etc). Saves me time.
I work in a communications office, so I'm still swamped with info. But because I don't pressure myself to geek out online, I enjoy a certain intellectual freedom.
I'm reading Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson in my spare time. It's a real pleasure.
Marti
Posted by: Marti | June 18, 2008 8:16 AM
Let's go to the far end of it: shouldn't cell phones be included in the list of productivity-disturbing tools ? Doesn't it work just the same way, stealing your focus under cover of something "urgent" that is actually not and that could wait or even be avoided ? Not to mention Blackberries, which are mostly disruptive: unless you go into changing all of the options, you can't start doing a thing without being interrupted by an incoming email that 99% of the time is something that's not related to what you are doing...
People now expect that you'll be available to listen to them anywhere-anytime, by email, by phone, or by whatever means. And unfortunately, unless businesses really notice that $650bn are going into such practices, I'm not sure it's about to change.
Posted by: Raph T. | June 18, 2008 8:53 AM
I'm afraid I have little sympathy for IT workers who blame their poor productivity on "information overload". There are all kinds of solutions that are easily available, such as self-control, saying "no", and turning things off.
Needless to say, corporate America also has a quick and easy way to recover the $650 billion that they've lost: fire employees that aren't productive, and hire employees that are.
Posted by: Marcello | June 18, 2008 9:59 AM
I am an information junkie and I suffer from information overload.
Posted by: Eluma | June 18, 2008 11:54 AM
See "SurfingThroughNoise: Riding the Online Knowledge Wave" at http://www.edpath.com/stn.htm
Posted by: George Lorenzo | June 21, 2008 5:15 AM
Copied from my blog:
There is no email overload - there is just less and less other work to do. Machines do more and more of our work - but there is one thing that they still cannot do - it is contact with other people. Computers can check the spelling of an email, compute some coefficients from a complicated formula but still suck at understanding humans and would not read or write that email for us.
Email is our work - communication with other humans is the task that still cannot be automated. That's why I am rather sceptical about the productivity boost of "no email days" introduced in some corporations. I suspect they just don't measure the right things.
All this does not mean that we should do all this human communication work in email - only that currently this is the tool most people use. Perhaps we could do this work in a bit more efficient way if we had a more complete toolbox.
Posted by: Zbigniew Lukasiak | July 11, 2008 6:53 AM