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Overload! How Too Much Information is Hazardous to your Organization
Timely advice for getting a grip on information overload in the workplace This groundbreaking book reveals how different kinds of information overload impact workers and businesses as a whole. It helps businesses get a grip on the financial and human costs of e-mail overload and interruptions and details how working in an information overloaded environment impacts employee productivity, efficiency, and morale. Timely and thought-provoking, Overload! addresses the reality of?and solutions for?a problem to which no one is immune.
- GenresNonfiction
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 18, 2011
54 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan B. Spira
4 books1 followerA noted author and expert in the field of Information Overload, Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and chief analyst of Basex (www.basex.com), a research firm focusing on issues companies face as they navigate the knowledge economy. His new book, Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization published by Wiley & Sons, is the culmination of more than ten years of research with some of the world’s top companies. The book details how Information Overload has infiltrated the workplace and our daily lives, and offers tips and strategies on how to deal with the dizzying excess of information.
Mr. Spira is recognized as one of the technology industry’s leading thinkers and pundits, having pioneered the study of knowledge workers and how information technology impacts them. He began studying the problem of Information Overload more than two decades ago and his findings, which include data on the lost productivity of knowledge workers, have been cited by thousands of papers and articles on the topic.
Mr. Spira, who directs all research and analytic activities at Basex, is a founding board member of the Information Overload Research Group, a consortium of large companies created to help stem the tide of Information Overload.
He is also the author of Managing the Knowledge Workforce: Understanding the Information Revolution that’s Changing the Business World (Mercury Business Press) and co-author of The History of Photography (Aperture), which was named a best book of the year by the New York Times.
Mr. Spira speaks regularly to industry and business groups on Information Overload-related subjects. He is a frequently cited news source and commentator for a broad range of business, trade and broadcast media (including Time magazine, the New York Times, Business Week and the Wall Street Journal).
Mr. Spira is recognized as one of the technology industry’s leading thinkers and pundits, having pioneered the study of knowledge workers and how information technology impacts them. He began studying the problem of Information Overload more than two decades ago and his findings, which include data on the lost productivity of knowledge workers, have been cited by thousands of papers and articles on the topic.
Mr. Spira, who directs all research and analytic activities at Basex, is a founding board member of the Information Overload Research Group, a consortium of large companies created to help stem the tide of Information Overload.
He is also the author of Managing the Knowledge Workforce: Understanding the Information Revolution that’s Changing the Business World (Mercury Business Press) and co-author of The History of Photography (Aperture), which was named a best book of the year by the New York Times.
Mr. Spira speaks regularly to industry and business groups on Information Overload-related subjects. He is a frequently cited news source and commentator for a broad range of business, trade and broadcast media (including Time magazine, the New York Times, Business Week and the Wall Street Journal).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 18, 2013
For those who are unfamiliar with Information Overload, this book is a good starting point. For those who are already familiar with it, it provides some case studies on what's been tried, but very little in the way of real solutions.
The first few chapters are devoted to defining Information Overload, giving you examples of it and trying to convince you that it's a real problem. I'm already familiar with it; I'm already convinced that it's an issue. That's why I read it. I'm looking for solutions. So, the first few chapters were "preaching to the choir."
For example: what is the harm in using "Reply All?" If you reply to a handful of people, a handful of people need to spend a few minutes mentally switching tracks from what they're doing, parse your email, then mentally switch tracks back. Sending to a larger group (say, hundreds of people), where most of them didn't need to see it, can easily cost a company 8 man-hours of work (or more). And that's just from ONE email. Yes, we get way too many emails sent to "All Corporate Users" at my place of employment :-(
This brings up an important point: the vast majority of people CAN NOT MULTITASK! Period. In a large study, only 2.5% of the people could actually multitask. For everyone else, their overall performance went DOWN as they attempted to juggle multiple tasks. We like to think that juggling multiple tasks means we're more productive, but the reality is the exact opposite. Just as 80% of people think they're better-than-average drivers (when the very definition of "average" means half are better and half are worse), far too many people think they can multitask. They are fooling themselves, to the detriment of their performance at work and the safety of themselves and everyone else when they're on the road.
It takes a certain amount of time to "context switch" from one task to another. Bouncing around between 2 or 3 high-priority tasks can easily put you into a state where you spend the entire day "context switching" and never actually make any progress on ANY of the tasks. Been there, done that. It ain't pretty.
This is, once again, "preaching to the choir." I already knew this.
Unfortunately, most of his solutions consist of understanding which medium is appropriate in which case, and what's good/bad etiquette. You'd think people would've figured these things out, but there's ample evidence that very few have done so.
He touches, lightly, on social networking, where people can have an IM-style conversation but the context is built through the course of the conversation. He goes so far as to mention these are starting to be found in corporations. And that's it.
In my experience, social networking at the corporate level is the best way to fight information overload. You can scan what's been said, understand the context, follow discussion and argument and get to the final point, without having to dig through an entire chain of messages in your inbox Most emails are simply rehashing what the last few people said and adding their two cents to the discussion. Social networking forums, properly done, eliminate the need to rehash anything. To my mind, this is the single best answer to Information Overload. Give me "discussions," where the entire conversation is broken out in a single page and I can see who is responding to which point, and you have a winner. Wiki pages, which receive almost NO mention in this book, where you can see the current version of the document and see the revision history, are a step in this direction. Yes, I'm a VERY heavy wiki user, and have been for a decade.
He also touches, lightly, on the need to have filters on the information feeds coming into our lives. I have multiple RSS/Atom feeds to which I subscribe. When I can get a feed reader which will learn to prioritize and filter what I'm interested in from the piles of stuff I'm not, that will be worth real money. Such tools are in the early stages of development. And, as they become more widespread, a lot of the "noise" on the modern Internet will simply be ignored, as well it should be.
Given these areas where he's touched, lightly, on potentially HUGE solutions, there is definitely room for another book with SOLUTIONS. This is not that book.
The first few chapters are devoted to defining Information Overload, giving you examples of it and trying to convince you that it's a real problem. I'm already familiar with it; I'm already convinced that it's an issue. That's why I read it. I'm looking for solutions. So, the first few chapters were "preaching to the choir."
For example: what is the harm in using "Reply All?" If you reply to a handful of people, a handful of people need to spend a few minutes mentally switching tracks from what they're doing, parse your email, then mentally switch tracks back. Sending to a larger group (say, hundreds of people), where most of them didn't need to see it, can easily cost a company 8 man-hours of work (or more). And that's just from ONE email. Yes, we get way too many emails sent to "All Corporate Users" at my place of employment :-(
This brings up an important point: the vast majority of people CAN NOT MULTITASK! Period. In a large study, only 2.5% of the people could actually multitask. For everyone else, their overall performance went DOWN as they attempted to juggle multiple tasks. We like to think that juggling multiple tasks means we're more productive, but the reality is the exact opposite. Just as 80% of people think they're better-than-average drivers (when the very definition of "average" means half are better and half are worse), far too many people think they can multitask. They are fooling themselves, to the detriment of their performance at work and the safety of themselves and everyone else when they're on the road.
It takes a certain amount of time to "context switch" from one task to another. Bouncing around between 2 or 3 high-priority tasks can easily put you into a state where you spend the entire day "context switching" and never actually make any progress on ANY of the tasks. Been there, done that. It ain't pretty.
This is, once again, "preaching to the choir." I already knew this.
Unfortunately, most of his solutions consist of understanding which medium is appropriate in which case, and what's good/bad etiquette. You'd think people would've figured these things out, but there's ample evidence that very few have done so.
He touches, lightly, on social networking, where people can have an IM-style conversation but the context is built through the course of the conversation. He goes so far as to mention these are starting to be found in corporations. And that's it.
In my experience, social networking at the corporate level is the best way to fight information overload. You can scan what's been said, understand the context, follow discussion and argument and get to the final point, without having to dig through an entire chain of messages in your inbox Most emails are simply rehashing what the last few people said and adding their two cents to the discussion. Social networking forums, properly done, eliminate the need to rehash anything. To my mind, this is the single best answer to Information Overload. Give me "discussions," where the entire conversation is broken out in a single page and I can see who is responding to which point, and you have a winner. Wiki pages, which receive almost NO mention in this book, where you can see the current version of the document and see the revision history, are a step in this direction. Yes, I'm a VERY heavy wiki user, and have been for a decade.
He also touches, lightly, on the need to have filters on the information feeds coming into our lives. I have multiple RSS/Atom feeds to which I subscribe. When I can get a feed reader which will learn to prioritize and filter what I'm interested in from the piles of stuff I'm not, that will be worth real money. Such tools are in the early stages of development. And, as they become more widespread, a lot of the "noise" on the modern Internet will simply be ignored, as well it should be.
Given these areas where he's touched, lightly, on potentially HUGE solutions, there is definitely room for another book with SOLUTIONS. This is not that book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review