Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 18

Internet distractions affect quality of copy editor's work

Until recently, I was editor-in-chief of a print magazine, Web site and newsletter, and as such, in charge of hiring copy editors. A few months ago, while hiring a new copy editor, I gave all candidates the same test, a printout of a long paragraph riddled with errors, and asked them to correct it by hand, using only a red pen and the reference books we had on hand (AP Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style, Webster's dictionary and a culinary dictionary). They were not permitted to use the Internet at all, as I wanted to test their core resourcefulness, abilities and knowledge.

We hired a candidate who had performed best on the test, finding more than 95% of its errors, and doing so very quickly. However, when she actually started working for us, the percentage of errors she missed while copy editing grew alarmingly (sometimes up to 50%), and it soon became clear why.

She was now copy editing on her computer, and while working, also had a variety of social media platforms and Websites up (many of which she also used for fact checking and copy editing). While performing her copy editing and other duties, and using the Internet to do so, she was also socializing online and had become increasingly distracted by the information overload.

Rethinking What Works Better When For the Twenty-First Century

Yes or no...

Ten years ago, I first wrote what I now refer to as "What Works Better When" a look at the practical and social implications of when one should use the telephone, instant messaging and, more recently, such tools as text messaging and social software.

When I first wrote this, we had three choices, namely the telephone, instant messaging, and in person contact.

I didn't anticipate how many choices there would be ten years later – and the number of choices brings in a new question, the personal preference of the recipient.

Without rehashing the entire piece, which I updated in my new book, Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization, I've observed some trends in how people use these various tools that make this revisit necessary.

I got to this point when several of my phone calls were criticized for, well, being phone calls.  "It's better to text me" I was chided by a friend after calling to say I wanted to grab a coffee with him while I was in his neighborhood.  "I don't always look to see who's calling but I almost always look at my new text messages" he helpfully explained.

The fact is that I do text, but I never associated immediacy with texting.  That was perhaps one of the underlying tenets of What Works Better When in fact, namely that when an immediate response is required, phone calls and instant messages are the obvious choices.

Therein lies the rub.  The mail-order business used to say "One person's junk mail is another person's L.L. Bean catalog" and the same holds true today for the variety of tools we have for reaching people.

The problem is that it's up to the sender (in this case, me) to keep up with all of these individual preferences.

Do I text Mark before calling?

Do I simply leave Paula a voicemail, knowing she always calls back quickly?

Do I reach out to Hans-Peter via Facebook to set up a time to chat?

Do I simply just dial someone if I need to get them?

If I do e-mail someone before calling, which e-mail do I use (while I still advocate the use of one e-mail address and inbox, the majority of knowledge workers seem to have several and they are not tied together)?

One physician I go to likes to communicate with patients via text message – and she's very good about it.  But my phone's battery unexpectedly ran out and I didn't see a text that my appointment had moved.  I showed up an hour early as a result but clearly it wasn't the end of the world.

I've texted people when I was running late (and in some cases couldn't actually call) and my assumption that they actually read the texts resulted in a certain amount of confusion about whether I was showing up at all.  Furthermore, had I called, assuming the person answered, I would have known with certainty that the person got the message.  Not so with texting, you simply have to trust that the message was received and read.

I've called in similar circumstances, and left voicemail, only to find out that the other party never was notified (or so he claims) of the voicemail.

In the end, I think technology may have obsoleted my What Works Better When soliloquy.  In today's increasingly frantic communications environment, it all comes down to personal preference – and that means you only have to keep track of the personal preferences of 300 or so of your closest friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

The Expert Access Radio Show interviews Jonathan Spira

 

Jonathan Spira is CEO and chief analyst of Basex, a research firm focusing on the critical issues companies face as they navigate the knowledge economy.

He spoke with Steve Kayser on The Expert Access Radio Show.

Interview available here.

Bloomberg Businessweek: E-Hoarding Is Unhealthy

E-Hoarding Is Unhealthy
Psychologists are right: Workers must organize and delete their e-mails—or risk cluttering their mental space. Pro or con?

PRO: DON'T LITTER IN YOUR ELECTRONIC YARD

by Marsha Egan, InboxDetox.com

You say, "So what?" to hoarding gigabytes of mostly useless information. I say, "Get real."

Information has never been easier to acquire. E-mails fly across the world in milliseconds. The average worker fields more than 100 every day, and you say e-hoarding is healthy? Is clutter healthy?

E-clutter, which results from e-hoarding, is costly, both mentally and monetarily. We have the same capacity to digest information as our forefathers, but the amount of information zinging its way into our lives is increasing exponentially.

According to the research firm Basex, information overload costs the U.S. economy a minimum of $900 billion per year in lowered employee productivity and reduced innovation. It adds time to normal tasks and creates stress.

A recent survey by the technology market research firm Radicati Group reported that "the typical corporate e-mail user sends and receives about 105 e-mail messages per day." That is a lot of e-mail to process, categorize, or store. Sorting through old messages and rummaging through our in-boxes like we're after the Holy Grail strips hours from each day.

Additionally, the anxiety that goes with having to scavenge through thousands of pieces of information, hoping that you've responded to all your e-mails, can be overwhelming.

Here's what it all comes down to: The more you save, the more you have to sift through. The less everything is organized, the more time you'll waste and the more stressed you'll become.

Organize your e-clutter, trash stuff you don't need, and free yourself to work on what truly matters.

CON: WHY DELETE THAT WHICH TAKES UP NO SPACE?

by John Waller, X1 Technologies

In an age of ever-increasing computing power and ever-decreasing storage costs, is there really any harm in ignoring the delete button? The bottom line is the volume of information isn't the issue; findability is. If you can find whatever you're looking for instantaneously, the total volume of information stored doesn't matter.

We can draw an analogy to the greater Web. The size of the Web continues to grow exponentially, but it causes no problem, because Google has solved the findability problem. We don't wish for fewer Web pages out there. Instead, we care about finding the right Web page in the shortest amount of time. No matter how much we obsess about creating and organizing our bookmarks, in almost all cases, searching Google is the shortest route to the best answer.

Heavy users of e-mail see upwards of 200 to 300 messages per day. Add documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and this number balloons. How does the average professional know what will not prove to be valuable information months and years later?

As businesses continue to use e-mail as the primary form of communication, keeping a digital trail of conversations and documents is critical, making deletion an increasingly irresponsible action. Findability remains the key, and today's impressive search and retrieval tools for e-mail and personal files make virtually any digital information available with just a few keystrokes.

Opinions and conclusions expressed in the Debate Room do not necessarily reflect the views of Bloomberg Businessweek, Businessweek.com, or Bloomberg LP.
Full article available here.

Information Management Magazine – Information Overload: None Are Immune

Interface – Information Overload: None Are Immune
Tools help with organizational challenges, but the problem of managing too much information is costly

Information Management Magazine, Sept/Oct 2011

Jonathan Spira

Savvy information managers focus on deploying best-of-breed tools in support of their mission, be it BI, CRM, governance and compliance, or predictive analytics. While these tools can go a long way in addressing organizational challenges, they can also be stopped cold by the elephant in the room, information overload.

Information overload describes an excess of information that results in the loss of ability to make decisions, process information expeditiously and prioritize tasks effectively. Information overload causes people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas.

The huge increase in knowledge work in the economy, coupled with the proliferation of technology, means that almost no one is immune to the problem. In fact, research conducted at Basex and included in my latest book, "Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization," shows that the problem cost the U.S. economy around $997 billion in 2010.

We used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate that there are approximately 78.6 million knowledge workers in the U.S. alone. These people hold a variety of jobs and responsibilities ranging from accounting clerk and medical technician to research scientist and CIO.

Regardless of the job and individual, each worker loses somewhere between 15 to 25 percent of his day due to the problem. And what exactly is the problem? Let's start with what it's not.

It isn't too much email, although email is a big part of the problem. It isn't search failures, although our inability to find things takes a huge toll. It isn't merely the explosion of technology that the workplace has seen in the past decade, even though this is also a contributor. And it isn't only the explosion of data that we've seen over the past 25 years, although more data is thrust in our direction each and every day than was consumed in the course of a lifetime by a single knowledge worker 100 years ago.

One of the biggest problems relating to information overload is actually a confluence of issues. Today, we have multiple tools at our fingertips with which we can create, save and forward information to thousands of people (if not more) with a single click.

Six years ago, we began to observe a phenomenon in our research that we named "recovery time." Recovery time is the amount of time it takes a worker to get back to where he was in his work or thought process prior to an interruption. Our research told us that this takes somewhere between 10 to 20 times the duration of the interruption. A 30-second interruption could require five minutes of recovery time.

Interruptions come in many forms – most prominently telephone calls, instant messages, text messages and social network messages – not to mention that many knowledge workers have relatively short attention spans, which leads to numerous self-interruptions. Since this occurs myriad times each day, the recovery time adds up and becomes a significant drain on the knowledge worker's resources.

When one then adds in a combination of the attitude of entitlement that has become the norm with many newer workers (in part because they grew up in a social environment that awarded medals to teams for coming in last and because Mr. Rogers inculcated into each of them that they were special) and a movement in society that not only thrives on, but demands instant gratification (an outgrowth of the introduction of the original FedEx service in April 1973), one then has a recipe for disaster.

The underpinnings of knowledge work are thought and reflection, but an analysis of the knowledge worker's typical day shows that only 5 percent is available for sitting back, thinking, and reflecting and that the Information Overload-related events occupy the greatest part of the day.

The problem of information overload is not unnoticed, but most managers are unaware of the huge costs. One Fortune 500 company estimates that information overload impacts its bottom line $1 billion per year.

A few additional figures uncovered in our research:

A minimum of 28 billion hours is lost each year to information overload in the U.S.
Processing 100 emails can occupy more than half of a worker's day.
58 percent of government workers spend half the workday filing, deleting or sorting information, at an annual cost of almost $31 billion dollars.
66 percent of knowledge workers feel they don't have enough time to get all of their work done.
94 percent of those surveyed at some point have felt overwhelmed by information to the point of incapacitation.

What can be done about the problem? Some solutions are simple, in hindsight. For example, think about a recent email exchange you were a part of, one that went on for a few days. In retrospect, the issue could most likely have been resolved with a short conference call.

What about the numerous people who don't seem to understand your email messages? Start reading messages for clarity before clicking send, use a subject line that clearly denotes the topic of the message, and stop combining multiple unrelated themes in one email.

There's a lot that can be done to lessen the impact of information overload. Clear and concise communication among co-workers and team members, particularly in email, can make a difference in simplifying the message, reducing the clutter and maintaining focus.

Because email is a major contributor to information overload, here are eight email tips from my new book,Overload.

Use restraint in communications. Don't cc the world, don't include more people than necessary in any communication, and avoid reply-to-all at all costs.
Write clearly. Better yet, refrain from combining multiple themes and requests in one single email. And make sure the subject is specific as opposed to general (writing "Help needed" without further details helps no one, especially the recipient). These simple steps will add instant clarity with little effort.
Read what you write – before you click send. Unclear communications result in excessive and unnecessary back-and-forth communications that would have been unnecessary were the first missive unambiguous and to-the-point.
Read what others write – before replying. While it would be nice to believe that people will place the most important information at the very beginning, often times the key facts are buried in the closing paragraphs. What you are about to ask may already have been covered.
Don't send mixed messages. Email messages should stick to one topic. Writing about the mid-year accounting review and adding in a question about a dinner meeting at the end is not only inappropriate, but it's likely the question will be overlooked.
Keep messages short and to the point. My informal study of the matter has shown that many email recipients don't read past the third sentence.
Value your colleagues' time as if it were your own. If a response to an email is not immediately forthcoming, don't pick up the phone or send an instant message saying, "Did you get my email?"
Finally, avoid the temptation to chime in unnecessarily with a one-word email such as "Great!" or "Thanks!" These messages only add to inbox clutter.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and chief analyst of Basex, a research firm focusing on issues companies face as they navigate the knowledge economy.

Full article available here.

 

Information, Information, Everywhere… But Not A Lot Of Good It Does

But where is the RIGHT information?

This essay is being written after numerous and somewhat frustrating encounters with the latest information technology.  One would think that we've reached a point where systems and computers should work flawlessly but that is less and less the case every day.

On the one hand, the Information Revolution of the late 20th century has resulted in an anywhere, anytime information society that has become accustomed to boundless gobs of information on demand.

On the other hand, no one has said that the stuff works.

From a technical standpoint, the advent of true ubiquitous computing (or at least, state-of-the-art ca. 2011) has markedly changed our attitude towards and interactions with information.  Our constant exposure to information leads us to have the expectation that it will be shared across systems, accurately and quickly.  If Facebook and Google can keep track of everything we are reading, sharing, and writing while we surf the Web, surely everyone else can too, right?

Unfortunately, information does not always get to where it needs to be.  I'll use my recent experience with an airline as an example.   Airlines are known to be leaders in IT; American Airlines introduced the first ever computer reservation system, Sabre, in 1960.  At the time it was one of the largest and most successful mainframe deployments ever.

Today, despite tremendous advances in technology over the course of 50 years, information often fails us.  Calls to customer service representatives at call centers asking the same or similar questions yield widely disparate answers, despite the fact that the agent is being guided by the system.

My own experiences in the past week relating to several different issues with an airline, including an error that was apparently computer generated as well as misinformation that was repeated by several agents almost verbatim, show me that we have a long way to go.

It won't surprise you to learn that fixing these problems took multiple phone calls and e-mail messages and wasted hours of time both on my part and on the part of the call center agents.

We used to say that computers don't make mistakes, but rather that the people who write the programs do.  I believe that this belief has become somewhat quaint if not obsolete.  While we are far from enjoying true artificial intelligence where machines actually think and respond on their own, we are at a point where autonomic or self-healing systems do evolve on their own, and sometimes seem to add in mistakes just to keep things interesting.

We want the right information on demand, without delay, without error.   As we add in more information, more systems, and more ways of getting information, what we end up with is something very different.

 

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

An absence of connectivity

I recently returned from a two week trip to Central America, where my Internet access was limited at best.  From the minute I planned the trip, I had decided to not bring my smartphone (a laptop was definitely out of the question) and take the time to unplug and clear my mind.

The first thing I found was that not having my smartphone was extremely liberating, and also freed up a large chunk of space in my pocket.  It was one less thing to concern myself with, and being that a smartphone is often one of the most expensive things we carry around with us, it was nice to not have to worry about it.  I did not miss the text messages, phone calls, and e-mail one bit, and in fact now plan on leaving my phone at home more often.

Not having constant online access was also refreshing, and did not really cause any major problems.  Not being able to check news or Facebook and LinkedIn didn't really bother me at all, in fact, I found myself much more focused on what I was actually doing at the time and far less concerned with the daily back-and-forth of political and technology news that I stay abreast of when not traveling.

Overall, I think that I spent maybe two hours online over the entire two weeks, nearly all of it spent on practical tasks such as confirming hotel and transportation reservations.

Now that I have returned, the challenge is to find ways to recreate the freedom of being disconnected, while living and working everyday in the connected world.

Guest Column: Bow-Ties and Information Overload

Bow-ties: classy and helpful for understanding Information Overload

Information Overload is something that most knowledge workers understand intuitively.  We all know what it feels like to stare at an overflowing inbox not unlike a deer in headlights, or to sit at your desk wracking your brain trying to remember the location of an important bit of information.

Unfortunately, although it is easy to recall the feeling of Information Overload, visualizing and conceptualizing it is much more difficult.  We get hung up in definitions, specific technologies, and different approaches to dealing with the problem, and as a result, often fail to see what the problem looks like on a simplified, macro level.  We understand what Information Overload is, but fail to see the forest for the trees.

To help visualize the complex information flows that every knowledge worker and every organization must navigate, I often use the metaphor of a bow-tie.  This helps me to understand and conceptualize Information Overload, and it may be helpful to you as well.  To start, simply picture the shape of a bow-tie (yes, the fancy one that goes around the neck).

On the left side of the bow-tie is the complex incoming information in the form of communications, news and reports, meetings, and any other information input, no matter how small.  This flow includes sources both internal and external to the organization that are filtered down and processed in the middle of the bow-tie, the knot.  The knot is where the complex flow of information is reduced, simplified, and digested so that it can be used to produce complex outcomes on the other side of the knot.  The right side of the bow-tie is where the structured and digested information is applied to business problems and used to create profit and gain advantage.

The bow-tie is a powerful model because it allows for complex inputs to be reduced to manageable blocks that are then used to drive complex outcomes.  The problem is that the knot of the bow-tie, and by extension the organization, team, or individual knowledge worker, is vulnerable to becoming overloaded.  If the knot fails and is overwhelmed by the incoming information on the left side, then the important outcomes being produced on the right side will suffer.

For example, imagine a knowledge worker (sitting in the middle, at the knot) who is dealing with too much information in the form of extremely high numbers of search results (the incoming information on the left-hand side of the bow-tie).  The combination of his inadequate search tools and techniques leads him to becoming overwhelmed.  As a result, he is not able to find the information he is looking for, and he moves forward with his project using sub-standard information.  The project (the output on the right-hand side of the bow-tie) ends up having to be redone and reviewed many more times than necessary because of the errors.  If the problem at the knot could have been avoided, the significant time and effort that was spent fixing the errors would have been saved.

On a group level, a sales team that is receiving an overwhelming amount of e-mail will be unable to effectively process the incoming information, leading to the team missing promising sales leads.  The team's failure to maximize the information they are receiving leads to the outputs that are produced being not up-to-par, in this case resulting in lower sales.  The problem in this case is the team's ability to process the high volume of e-mail effectively; resolving that pain point would improve the output and drive to higher sales.

Now, I don't expect anyone to start wearing bow-ties because of this Information Overload visualization technique (although they are very stylish and perhaps underused).  Nonetheless, applying this metaphor to areas where Information Overload is harming productivity and impacting an organization's bottom line may help to understand the problem and focus efforts to address it.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.  He can be reached at cburke@basex.com

Forbes: Information Overload Makes Us Dazed and Confused

Forbes reporter Tom Gillis writes:

Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at research firm Basex , has been tracking the information overload phenomenon for years. In his new book "Overload: How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization" , Spira details the scope of the problem (billions of dollars in lost productivity). He also outlines strategies for dealing with it.

This book has some good advice, …

Read the complete article here

Dow Jones Expert Series: Effectively Fight Information Overload

Dow Jones would like to invite you to a free event on Tuesday 20th September, 2011 on how to Effectively Fight Information Overload.

94% of knowledge professionals who were recently surveyed* indicated they have felt overwhelmed by information to the point of incapacitation. Is this an issue you are facing every day? If yes, register now.

10.00 – 10.30    Registration and Refreshments

10.30 – 10.40    Welcome Note, Dow Jones

10.40 – 11.30    Effectively Fight Information Overload

Featured speaker:    Jonathan Spira, Basex

11.30 – 11.50     Information Evolution – Bertrand Fougnies, Dow Jones

11.50 – 12.00     Questions

12.00 – 12.05     Closing Note, Dow Jones

12.05 – 13.00    Lunch and Networking

RSVP today for yourself and a colleague. If you have any questions please contact Ade Akinsanya, or telephone

+44 (0) 203 217 5032.