Maintain sanity in a technology-driven world
By Anna Marie Kukec
"Now that you are connected to the Internet, internal e-mail, a shared office calendar, computerized time and billing, a fax machine spewing out paper 24 hours each day, voice mail at the office and at home . . . . are on three e-mail lists, receive 10 junk e-mail messages each day in addition to five mail order catalogs and product offers . . . . and have a direct dial phone line so clients can bypass your office staff and talk to you directly, you might be feeling a bit stressed.Oh, did I mention the pager and cell phone, or is that two cell phones? . . . . You can always head home for a quiet dinner, except for those telemarketing calls that you can now screen on a Caller ID display on your new 900 MHz portable speakerphone/electronic answering machine with three private and one public voice mail boxes.
Then you can settle down to watch one or all of the 125 cable channels on your new television featuring picture-in-picture so you can watch more than one channel at a time."
-- Art Saffran, voluntary victim of information overload
Whew! After a day at the office or at home, we can become victims of an emerging malady in this technology-driven era called "information overload."
"It’s our inability to extract needed knowledge from an immense quantity of information," says Art Saffran of Madison, computer services director of the State Bar of Wisconsin. He offered suggestions on taming this new beast during a presentation before the National Association of Bar Executives at the midyear meeting.
New technology coupled with more traditional piles of paper can create a flood of information. Junk mail, memos, letters, newspapers, magazines, faxes, voice mail and e-mail swell the continuous stream of communication. Some people become addicted, craving more information. Others become victims, unable to cope with the flow or know how to use it effectively.
Getting bombarded with information can produce stress, create information addiction and increase competition, according to a December 1997 Reuters study called "Glued to the Screen: An Investigation into the Effects of Information Addiction Worldwide." Reuters surveyed 1,000 people in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, and Singapore and found:
65 percent agree that their working environment has grown more stressful because of tighter deadlines, more information received and used each day and more time being spent in the office. 76 percent believe personal computers, the Internet and information in general could become addictive to some people in the future. 80 percent gather more information than ever before to keep up with customer and competitor activity. 50 percent feel unable to handle the amount of information accumulated. 70 percent believe reduced job satisfaction and tension with other colleagues result from the stress of dealing with the quantity of information needed to fulfill their tasks. How do you get it?
So how does information overload happen? How does it effect our quality of life? How do we manage it?
Overload sometimes happens when a person doesn’t understand the available information; feels overwhelmed by the amount; doesn’t know where to find it; or just doesn’t have access to it with a password. Often the sheer volume, accessibility, usability and relevance of it play a part, too, explains Saffran.
"Some people will actually develop Information Fatigue Syndrome where they get physically sick as a result of stress caused by information overload," he adds.
Such fatigue and distractions can lead to missed opportunities, the inability to find critical information, and another manifestation--Information Weary-ness.
"Sometimes you’ll just a reach a point and say, ‘Don’t tell me anymore!’" Saffran says.
In order to avoid reaching this saturation point and still manage the deluge of information, Saffran developed the following strategies to maintain sanity.
Manage your schedule. Block out time on your calendar to work on projects. Schedule it like an appointment. Don’t take phone calls or answer e-mail during this time. Focus on your work. Schedule your e-mail time. Respond to e-mail the same as you’d respond to faxes and letters. Just because the message comes by e-mail doesn’t mean you have to drop everything and reply. Limit e-mail lists. Subscribe only to lists with high value. Read messages daily and delete unneeded ones. If you’re deleting most of the messages, it’s time to drop that list subscription. Get e-mail lists in digest form. This offers one big message daily or weekly with all the messages sent to the list. A digest reduces the number of e-mail messages and the stress that large numbers of messages can cause. Use e-mail folders and rules. Get e-mail software programs that allow you to store messages in folders and establish rules. Rules let you to tell your e-mail software how to deal with incoming messages. You can create a rule that automatically stores e-mail list messages in an appropriate folder. Learn to use your tools. The computer at your desk and the programs you use every day are the information management tools available now. Learn to use them effectively to find, store, manage and retrieve information. Manage your clutter. Remove knickknacks and office supplies. Record appointments. Skim reading materials and flag important items. Number all paper related to a project. Get a Personal Information Manager (PIM). Keep track electronically of appointments, addresses, passwords, business contacts and notes. One example is PalmPilot. Also use a personal scanner to scan correspondence and other written documents for electronic storage. Create an Intranet. Store information on an Intranet, which is a Web site for internal office use. Use a search engine to seek other information and let all staff use it. Also, have your organization’s databases available on the Intranet. Simplify. Focus on what is important. Schedule time. Do no over-commit. Have some fun at work--and a life outside the office! The author is the reporter for Bar Leader.
