Information Overload - How To Survive This Ancient Problem

Online, March 15, 2011 (Newswire.com) - As surprising as it may seem, information overload isn't a modern problem. It's been around for over 2000 years, as Ann Blair points out in her article below - Information Overload's 2300-Year-Old History.

However, it's probably safe to say that it's now a much worse problem than it's ever been, largely due to the massive advances that have been made in sharing information electronically.

This means that it's now more important than ever to have effective strategies and techniques in place to avoid sinking under this deluge of information. Richard Young makes some very useful suggestions in his article below - How To Survive Information Overload.

Information Overload's 2300-Year-Old History:

We're all worried about the costs of information overload and we typically associate these problems with new digital technologies. But actually information overload has very deep roots: signs of information overload were present already in the accumulation of manuscript texts in pre-modern cultures and were further accelerated by the introduction of printing (in the 15th century in the case of Europe).

In the Western tradition, complaints about the abundance of books surface in antiquity (in Ecclesiastes 12:12 or Seneca in the 1st century CE). In 1255 the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais articulated eloquently the key ingredients of the feeling of overload which are still with us today: "the multitude of books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory."

Vincent's solution was to write a massive book (of some 4.5 million words) in which he gathered the "flowers" or best bits of all the books he was able to read, to spare others the costs (in time, effort and access to books) of doing so themselves.

In the 15th century, printing rapidly multiplied the number of books available and lowered their cost. The experience of overload, which had been limited to a privileged elite, became more widespread as more of the educated could buy more books than they could read or remember. They coped by taking notes to record the best passages from their reading and by relying on aids of various kinds - including people they hired to take notes for them, or printed reference works or, starting in the late 17th century, periodicals which circulated excerpts and book reviews.

Overload is not something that just happened to Europeans in the Renaissance as if they stumbled across ancient texts long forgotten in medieval libraries, or a new continent in America, or a new technology like printing. Overload was born from a drive to accumulate and save which became particularly visible in the Renaissance as individuals and institutions collected copies of ancient texts, exotic natural specimens and artifacts, forming the kernel of libraries and museums that have sometimes endured to the present.

Visit the link below to read the full article:

http://www.managementnuggets.com/2011/03/information-overload-how-to-survive.html

How To Survive Information Overload:

It's a challenge of modern life: email, Twitter feeds, instant messaging, text messages, and other snippets of information are coming at us so fast that it's hard not to feel under digital attack. Sure, some of it's important - and that's precisely the problem. Turn it all off and you might as well quit the workforce. But read it all and your mind becomes so drained that it's a challenge to get anything else done.

In some ways, technology has evolved in a way that puts mere humans in a bind. Consider the email conundrum. From the moment you wake up, it seems the inbox is calling your name. And if you're like most of us, you answer its call pretty quickly.

"The brain hates uncertainty," says David Rock, the CEO of Results Coaching Systems and author of "Your Brain at Work." "It's literally painful to not download your email the moment you arrive at your desk in the morning. But once you've processed 30 or 40 emails, you've ruined your brain chemistry for higher level tasks that are going to create value."

In fact, a University of London study done for Hewlett-Packard found that "infomania" - a term connected with addiction to email and texting - can lower your IQ by twice as much as smoking cannabis. Moreover, email can raise the levels of noradrenaline and dopamine in your brain by constantly introducing new stimuli into your day. When those levels get too high, complex thinking becomes more difficult, making it harder to make decisions and solve problems - key roles for all managers.

In short, the brain's capacity for decision-making evolved at a time when people had less to think about. Great, so now you have an excuse for not keeping up. But you still need a game plan.

Visit the link below to read the full article:

http://www.managementnuggets.com/2011/03/information-overload-how-to-survive.html