Hey Paul
We are all living it and yes there is a lineup of kids that are ready and willing to live in the hamster wheel. That doesn't mean its a good way to live or that we are more productive or thoughtful because of it. Could i give up my 2 blogs and endless social media life? Probably not. But that doesn't mean I'm making better work because of it.

To be sure, information overload is an overblown concept. But if you think about it for a bit, what people are really complaining about is not too much information per se, but too little information of the right kind. Whether corporative executives or teenagers, people are just deluged with information flooding in thru every imaginable medium - much of it accompanied by claims that it is precisely what they need to vastly improve their lives! Yet, they're not getting enough of the information that they really need to make their decisions.

The feeling is akin to that of a thirsty person adrift in the salty ocean, who can't get a drop of fresh water to drink. That's the real lament.

Eventually we will get better at managing all the information around, so that the supply better matches the demand in time and space. Meanwhile, it's a good idea to realise that the information deluge is not an aberrant or a transient state - it's the default state to be in. Looked at another way, it's the price each one of us needs to pay to stay abreast of the breakneck pace of change. It's called the the "information economy", remember?

Not to contradict my uber-boss (I work at Xerox, in the innovation org.), but I don't actually think information overload is necessarily a problem. It IS a problem for information _producers_ who must contend with attention scarcity, but it is not a problem for information consumers if you think about the issue differently. I think it only appears as a problem when framed in a specific unhelpful way.

So what's a more productive framing? I won't pretend to have the whole answer, but the beginnings of a useful angle are to be found in the 'food as thought' conceptual metaphor, and a careful analogy with dieting, weight management and exercise on the one hand, and information consumption on the other. I explored this idea at length (though in a preliminary way) in this article on my blog.

Because of this information overload, many organizations have adopted ECM (Enterprise Content Management) packages such as MicroSoft's SharePoint or Xerox's DocuShare which allow organizations to set up central collections or file folders where pertinent information can be stored, updated and kept for future refereal. This may result in several benefits (I'll list just a few):

1) reduce amount of printed material (GREEN BENEFIT)
2) reduce EMAIL
3) protects organizations from disimenating outdated or incorrect information
4) provieds a paper trail for regulatory compliance
5) provides a collaboration tool for virtual employees

The problem isn't information overload. It is work overload. It is easy to hit the delete key to get rid of irrelevant messages. The problem is that there are so many relevant ones we have to handle because we are all responsible for so many things.

Linda Stone, a blogger on Huffington Post who coined the term "continuous partial attention" to describe out distractedness, today noted the difference between what she calls "receptive distraction" and "deceptive distraction." The former is what happens when you take a break from your work -- a time-out, where you let thoughts go and allow yourself to be refreshed, as when you take a walk outside for a few minutes. ("a palate cleanser," a friend of hers called it, that allows you to rejuvinate.) The latter is what happens when you "spin out" in email.

We could all use more receptive distraction!

I agree with the value of the information we can obtain so quickly and efficiently with e-mail. I would much rather get an e-mail rather than a voicemail. Voicemail tag used to drive me crazy. Now with a Blackberry I can respond to and get relevent information quickly versus the old voicemail tag when someone would leave a message for you to call them, then you get their voicemail.... That is what I call frustrating technology.

The Value of being in touch far out weighs the overload of informaion.

Thanks for the article. I esp. liked the idea of self-erasing paper. I wrote about it a while back! Another idea: Smelly Stickies: Post-it notes that rot. They get progressively stinkier as time goes by. Application: avoiding late fees :-) I'd love to do it with email ... How would that work?

Cheers!

http://matthewcornell.org/blog/2005/12/end-of-year-idea-grab-bag-smelly_18.html

El exceso de información no es un problema de los medios que se utilizan en el desarrollo de nuestra actividad- copiadoras, impresoras, e-mail, móvil, reuniones, etc.-, el problema es el mal uso que se da de éllos. La responsabilidad, casi siempre, es de los Dirigentes que son incapaces de entrenar a las personas que están en sus equipos para que utilicen estos medios de manera que les permitan ser más eficientes. Los Dirigentes son incapaces de analizar y filtrar la información que reciben y que posteriormente deben transmitir, por que en la inmensa mayoría de las ocasiones se producen repeticiones de información, que se envía por diferentes medios –e-mail, fax, sms, etc. – a los miembros de un equipo y que al final generan trabajo improductivo, perdidas de tiempo, costes innecesarios y enfado en los Clientes finales y en los empleados de la propia empresa.

Yo he trabajado durante 30 años en Xerox España y estoy convencido de que todas las innovaciones lanzadas al mercado por la compañía , han sido siempre para hacer más eficiente la labor de los empleados de cualquier empresa y nunca para generar información innecesaria, otro tema son las estrategias de ventas y de servicio seguidas por Xerox.

Respecto a la Sra. Anne Mulcahy, creo que es una persona que en sus inicios como CEO realizo un excelente trabajo, pero que desde el año 2004, se ha endiosado, gracias a los medios de comunicación, y no escucha ni a sus Clientes ni a sus empleados, a pesar de lo que le pueda comentar a usted, estoy seguro de que si haría realmente lo que comenta en su entrevista la historia de Xerox hoy seria diferente.

Saludos cordiales,
Luis Fernando Fernández García
Bilbao - ESPAÑA