Best of all, the folks at Basex shared it – “Information Overload – The Movie” is available to us all on YouTube and on the Basex blog.

Via the Basex blog.

My first reaction was of astonishment, since we at IORG all know the body of research that proves multitasking – the futile attempt to “do five things at once” – can reduce effectiveness, creativity, and so forth. On closer reading, however, it became clear that Sawyer has quite a different definition of “Multitasking” in mind. He refers to the ability of people to seek information from multiple sources, as when students stop listening to their teacher to browse the web, or SMS, or tweet, in class. You can read the article and form your opinion; in my case this started me thinking: how come the same word refers to “our” kind of multitasking – trying to respond to endless interruptions – and to Sawyer’s exuberant exploration of knowledge resources?

Leaving aside the fact that nobody really does multiple things at once, so it’s more a matter of time-slicing, I concluded that there is indeed good multitasking and bad multitasking: it’s good if the person chooses what and when to multitask on, and it’s destructive if the choice is forced by incoming, unsolicited interrupters. In Sawyer’s classroom example students go where they wish in knowledge space; in the typical workplace environment knowledge workers are endlessly forced to drop one thing to respond to another.

To see how, check this post on Commonsense Design, my other blog.

This was a glimpse of a problem I think is fairly widespread – many organizations live with IO while being in a sort of denial about its impact on their actual business. Most everyone feels the immediate effect on their stress level and quality of life, but they don’t make the leap to realize that work output suffers as well.

I think that is one key area where we of the IORG can be of use – to raise awareness of what is really going on. If they don’t understand what it’s costing them, businesses will be unlikely to assign resources to fixing the IO problem!

What do you think?

Personally I always thought that senior leaders of nations have licked Information Overload. After all, one can’t imagine that the President of the United States slaves for hours each day over a flooded email inbox… he must have a dozen aides summarizing the news and distilling for their chief a beautifully short list of what he really needs to know…

Turns out I was wrong; at least Mr. Obama, who is quite close to that level, pointed out to Cameron that “the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking”; while Mr. Cameron highlighted the difficulty in doing so when he said “these guys just chalk your diary up”… their support system may facilitate scheduling and information processing but “Thinking Time” is still a rare commodity for a world leader. One shudders to connect this observation with the ample research about reduced decision quality and increased error rates that an overloaded work style causes.

I’d love to know what these two are doing about it… and we’d certainly welcome them as IORG members!