11 Tips: Dealing with Information Overload

Need to have constant access to news? Crave being the first to share gossip? Get a feeling of satisfaction from knowing more than others? You may be addicted to information, warns Caitlin Mackesy Davies

Image via Wikipedia

I challenge you to read this article all the way to the end, without stopping to respond to an SMS, checking your email inbox or getting distracted by that Google alert you just set up to track mentions of your name.

If it sounds easy, and you find it simple to ignore electronic temptation, great. You probably don’t even need to read on. For most of us, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep our focus for more than a few moments, largely because we just can’t resist the gadgets that were supposed to make us productive but are now helping to turn some of us into e-addicts.

Research commissioned by harmon.ie*, a social email software provider, reveals that nearly half of us are interrupted by electronic distractions every 15 minutes. As a result, a third of us have trouble getting our work done and a quarter can’t think creatively about our work, which means that our productivity aids may be doing more harm than good.

Need help dealing with distraction: Try these interventions

1. Shut down
   The harmon.ie report says half of us go to bed connected. Setting aside what this means for our marriages, consider our mental health. Unless it’s a professional necessity, switch off and focus on family and friends once you close your front door.
2. Block the way
   Set aside reasonable blocks of time during the day to concentrate on one task, project or decision at a time. Leave your desk and go off site so that you can get out of the loop.
3. Clear the decks
   Something we are actively ignoring – an email we’d rather not deal with or an unpleasant task – can steal attention from the activities we choose to do. Vaporise the elephant stomping around your head to make mental space for other tasks.
4. Take two
   Take social interruptions out of the equation by using a separate device for personal business and real business.
5. Time change
   If your office is routinely quiet at a certain time of the day, consider changing your work habits or even your working hours to take advantage of the quiet times when you won’t be disturbed.
6. Use cues
   If interruptions are inevitable, writing a one or two-word mental “placeholder” on a Post-it® note when you leave one task for another is an easy way to help yourself snap back into the previous task when you return to it.
7. Keep tabs
   Track how well you keep your focus by jotting down each task when you sit down to do it, and then logging interruptions and distractions that got in the way (be honest!). This will give you a view of what keeps you from being productive so you can tackle the offenders.
8. Take a break
   Counterintuitive? Not really. It’s easy to reach overload on a project if you are giving it your full attention. Allow yourself a break to recharge, maybe even check your email, but set a limit so you get back on track.
9. Work together
   When you sit down and share a task with a colleague you get the benefits of constant feedback face-to-face instead of online, and can stand a better chance of staying on-message.
10. Have respect
    As a manager, create an atmosphere in which people allow others to focus by respecting time they take on a task. That means assigning them hours, days even, where they are allowed to give work their full attention and are interrupted only in emergencies.
11. Extreme measures
    LeechBlock is a Firefox browser add-on that lets you block or limit access to websites that you just can’t resist. Choose your access limit by day, hour or minute. It also reports your usage so you can identify online bad habits. For Google Chrome users, StayFocusd offers a similar service.