News item describes a boundary-breaking collaboration, funded at $1M for 4 years by the National Science Foundation, between Boston University researchers from diverse departments. The collaboration will look at advanced technology to get a handle on media overload.

Quote: While there are a handful of very good digital reading tools (Pocket, Flipboard, Kindle), the next wave of products will be built to deliver a better news consumption experiences.

Whenever there’s a holiday, no matter where it falls during the year and the work week, you know one thing’s for sure: Productivity is going to drop.

Information Overload is a common topic of discussions in the press and literature. It is also the subject of research, tools, and techniques. But there is also an important but related problem: Decision Overload.
Information Overload occurs when the information available exceeds the processing abilities of the individual or can be processed in the time available.

By contrast, Decision Overload occurs when the vast amount of available information makes it difficult to decide upon the correct course of action(s).

“A weekday issue of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in an entire lifetime in the seventeenth century.”

Variants of this statement (give or take a couple of centuries) are commonly seen when reading about Information Overload. Of course I agree that there’s more information available today than back in centuries past, but this particular statement always seemed suspicious to me. Is it true? And what if it is?

Very noteworthy article from Andrew McDermott regarding ways to overcome overload. Great suggestions and guidance that can really make a difference.

Rob Cross offers a good description of collaborative overload (ref link included) and a diagnostic test.

During the 1990’s, organizations shifted from a functional-centric structure to a business process-centric structure. After completing difficult change management actions, benefits were harvested, e.g., reduced cycle time, decreased rework and improved customer satisfaction. Information overload can occur from individual actions during and outside of work as well as team activities. The cited references describe some root causes of collaboration overload and suggests remedies. The benefits from a business process-centric structure can be reduced by collaboration overload. It’s worth reading these materials to achieve your expectations from collaboration benefits. Marty B #IORGforum

Interruptions, multitasking and poor sleep were associated with significantly increased rates of prescribing errors among emergency physicians. WMC mitigated the negative influence of these factors to an extent. These results confirm experimental findings in other fields and raise questions about the acceptability of the high rates of multitasking and interruption in clinical environments.

Yet despite such optimistic views, trust in the media is still low (at 27 percent for newspapers according to the report) and new research that surveyed 19,000 American adults age 18 and older shows that people struggle with navigating through the abundance of information.

Overloaded inboxes can wait – it’s time for my productivity gut check for 2018. Here’s why we shouldn’t wait for our employers to seize the day, and why the digital skills gap factors in.