Information Overload Management Strategies Essay

Information Overload Management Strategies Essay

Values, priorities, and regulations are constantly changing in any society, people are to adjust to their social and economic environments, and they are to learn to be successful under those living conditions, which are dictated by that epoch when they were born. The modern world is very hectic, technologies are developing rapidly, things change quickly, and humans are to adjust their life modes to this rapidly changing environment, and be able to make quick decisions and actions. The role of information nowadays is highly estimated. Information comes from various sources and even small children know much more than they used to know decades ago. On the one hand, this process is absolutely natural, as humanity is to develop and become more sophisticated. On the other hand, there are certain risks and challenges, related to the process of speeding everything up. Information overload is a developing problem for most modern individuals in their personal and professional lives. This is a kind of new condition, which should be managed by modern individuals of any age, otherwise, they would have little chance for success.

Information overload could be defined with simple words as they attempt to deal with more information than an individual is able to process in order to remain sensible and correct in his decisions and choices. If a person fails to cope with the informational overload, then he is not able to make the correct decisions or they are significantly delayed.

For the first time the term “information overload” was used by Alvin Toffler in 1970, when he was talking about the future, which was supposed to bring serious changes in information processing. He was already able to predict that humans would face problems with managing huge amounts of information. The current period received the name – the information age. But it is important to note here that written information appeared a long time ago, thousands of years have passed since the moment when people started to make notes of their ideas and events. An important milestone in the history of humanity was the invention of the printing press. It provided the opportunity not only to put down the needed information but also to distribute it among other individuals, thus significantly larger amounts of people received access to new information. Later on, the printing process was simplified with the invention of the computers, when millions of users were able to create, duplicate, read and rewrite huge amounts of information with the help of their personal computers and access to the internet. Such free access to such huge amounts of information caused information overload for the general population.

The root of the problem is that the amount of information is growing, whereas human minds seem to function at the same speed, becoming less effective in such environments.

It is important to split the sensory overload from informational overload, as human senses are able to perceive tens of millions of signals from their senses every second. People hear sounds, feel touches, see pictures; although the amount of sensory information is rather big, humans manage it much better, than information overload.

The major causes of information overload are the following:

  • free access to the internet
  • easy distribution of information to large numbers of individuals, for example, sending emails or messages
  • easy duplicating of information
  • incorrect presentation of information, lack of filtering or simplification of it
  • unclear content, it takes more time to understand it
  • errors or inconsistencies in the content, which need additional checking.

The problem of information overload could be spread easily. For example, one individual faces the problem of information overload, he is not able to manage and process it and the only way out for him is to pass this information further, without making it more concise and clearly represented. The next recipient of this information portion would have to face the same problems and would be overloaded with them.

Unfortunately, at the moment there is no simple and universal solution to the problem of information overload invented. Still, there were some strategies and approaches worked out, which could at least contribute to the reduction of the problem. Examples of these solutions include:

  • all individuals should clearly understand the difference between two types of information: the first time is information, which is good to know and the second type is information, which is necessary to know. As soon as these two types are evident to a person, he is able to stop spending his time on gaining just interesting information and would concentrate on the needed information.
  • Individuals should remember that the quality of information is much more important than its quantity. There is no need in writing/reading a long email if the facts could be informed with the help of a couple of sentences.
  • The creation of better information is to some extent related to the previous point, as individuals should learn to get and provide qualitative information, for example, they should be able to ask direct questions, along with providing clear and precise answers to other people.
  • If there is an important task to be done quickly, a person should do his best to focus all his attention and effort upon performing it, instead of thinking about multiple other tasks
  • There should be much time during the day, when a person is absolutely disconnected from various interrupting things, like example telephone calls, emails, internet communication, etc. This time is needed for concentrating on the performance of one important task without being constantly distracted from it.

It was already mentioned that the problem of information overload has become especially acute during the last decades when most individuals are living in a high-speed digital environment. People have multiple emails, messages, and accounts for their private things and for work. Managing all these messages and accounts in time is a serious problem. “There is a growing body of evidence that frequently checking emails, texts, social media, etc. significantly hampers productivity, so people need to break this habit.” (Schiff 2014).

There is a number of strategies, which could help to cope with digital information overload in both professional and personal spheres. In order not to have mess with emails and messages, it is advisable to establish a schedule for checking them. If this is not something crucial, this information could wait a couple of hours, some of the issues even get resolved within this period of time. All the emails should be categorized immediately. Upon developing a system for categorization, an individual should use it for his emails, splitting important and urgent information from the rest. “Deal with every [email] message by either deleting it or moving it out of your inbox,” says Maura Thomas, founder of RegainYourTime.com and author of Personal Productivity Secrets. “First, halt new messages from downloading by setting your client so that messages only come in when you press the send/receive button,” she says. Then “try to process your inbox to zero before hitting the send/receive button to download new messages. This should be done at least once per week.” (Schiff 2014). The organization of team meetings could solve the problem of too many emails partially, as immediate personal discussion of some work problems could save a lot of time and effort for all participants.

Overall, the problem of information overload is not new; however, it started to deepen along with the rapid development of communication technologies and the internet. At the moment there is no universally accepted solution for this problem, still, there is a number of good strategies, application of which could help individuals cope with their information overload in the workplace and in their personal lives.

Works cited:

Edmunds, A., Morris. A. “The problem of information overload in business organizations: a review of the literature.” International journal of information management 20.1 (2000): 17-28.

Frand, J., Lippincott, A. Personal Knowledge Management: A Strategy for Controlling Information Overload, 2002

Maes, P. “Agents that reduce work and information overload.” Communications of the ACM, 1994

Schiff, J. L. 7 Tips for Managing Digital Information Overload, 2014