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Information Overload in the Internet Age

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In the movie "He's Just Not That Into You," Drew Barrymore has a dialogue to this effect: And now, you have to go through all this just to get rejected by seven different technologies - it is exhausting!

This reflects the time we live in. Information age - Age of Internet, emails, cell phones with ever-increasing features! Information Overload or Infomania has Dictionary definition: a continual and excessive quest for acquiring and disseminating knowledge and information.

As per Wikipedia: Infomania is the debilitating state of information overload, caused by the combination of a backlog of information to process (usually in email), and continuous interruptions from technologies like phones, instant messaging, and email.

On an average, how many sources for News do we use? Newspaper, Radio, TV, News web sites, Youtube, blogs, twitter, RSS feeds, the list goes on. most of the times, we get the same information from various sources. For communication, we use Email, Phone, IM, Text messages, Voicemail, Facebook, Myspace and so on. Not only that, we have multiple phones, email addresses and instant messengers.

Basex is a Research company for Knowledge economy issues and it has called "information overload" as the Problem of the year for 2008. Constant interruptions cost America around $650 billion dollars a year - that could have been the stimulus package!

One of the notions which comes out of all these technologies is that of multitasking. This is a typical office scenario. Any time there is a conference call, people get on the call, press mute button and start "multitasking". They may be replying to emails, reading other documents or even making a cup of coffee. When someone asks a question to a specific person, mostly the reply is: I am sorry, I was on mute. Could you please repeat the question? The phone has a mute button, we have discovered a 'deaf' button as well!

Another nuisance of emails at work is group emails. Someone sends out an email about a ball game to all employees at a site, for example. Thirty enthusiastic responders will 'Reply All' to say 'Count me In'. Five wise men will 'Reply All' to say please do not reply to all. And 4 geniuses will 'Reply All' to say 'Please remove my name from this chain'. You would have received 40 emails in matter of minutes. And if you have a beep or an envelope indicating 'You Have Got Mail', you would hate that feature and pull your hair.

There is a group called Information Overload Research Group and Nathan Zeldes from Intel is the chairman of the group. Nathan estimates "the impact of information overload on each knowledge worker at up to eight hours a week -- we loose one day out of 5!

On an average, a person gets 75 to 100 work emails a day, 50% of these are not relevant. We feel overwhelmed with where to look and what to do, how to find important information or tasks from the bulk - how to sort wheat from the chaff. Add to this the personal email pile -- spam, chain letters and recycled jokes, quotes and so on.

An example of home multitasking: TV is switched on with remote handy to flip channels, laptop is on lap, couple of IM windows are active, cell phone is right there.

Don't get me wrong. Each of these technologies has a great value to make our lives more effective and efficient. The email, chat, GPS, Internet, cell phone - these are all enablers. The fact that we can record a home video, review it on computer, send to family far away or upload on YouTube is really cool. The question is: How to deal with the issue of infomania?

First and foremost, take a stance and build some discipline:We are using the tools, not being used by them.

  • Just because it is possible, you should not be reachable to everybody all the time.
  • When you need to focus on something, turn off your cellphone, don't pay attention to incoming mails. In fact, incoming email indicator can be turned off forever.
  • Allocate chunks of times for email checking and replying. Handle each piece of information minimum number of times.
  • Politely decline meeting requests where you have nothing to gain or contribute.
  • Do not take your computer or work email device during vacation.
  • DO NOT subscribe to every news/blog/RSS feed service.
  • And lastly, meditate to regain your focus.

 

To conclude, Information revolution and information overload is going to continue in 21st century. In order to leverage this revolution for better, we need to pick and choose. And, we need to ask ourselves at the end of the day. week, month -- Are we adding value to our lives and our world? Or, are we getting exhausted coping with the technology created by others?

Bina Mehta is an IT professional with over 18 years of experience. She holds PMP certification from Project Management Institute. She serves as President of FairOaks Toastmasters Club and has achieved Competent Communicator. Her interests include Reading, Writing, Problem Solving, Public Speaking, Yoga

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How To Break-Free From People Pleasing

Have you ever truly felt "Approved"?

I won't be surprised if you answered "No" to that question. Because most of us don't feel "Approved" enough to cause us to believe it. And as a result we go through life feeling "wrong", "insecure" and "rejected" thereby losing our self-confidence and developing low self-esteem. 

In fact, not feeling approved can leave us so empty and hungry inside that we may eventually seek to satisfy ourselves by doing things we think will cause others to like us, affirm us and approve us, thus becoming an "Approval Addict"! 

 I am sure you would agree that trying to impress others is exhausting! It minimizes your own importance and individuality, which could be very damaging to you in the long run. 

The good news is that you no longer have to continue to find worth, validation or value in other people's approval. You don't need to suffer any longer with insecurity or rejection. You don't have to strive to please others while feeling miserable yourself. 

There is a cure for the approval addiction. Here are a few quick and easy steps to get you started!

If you are not seeing the remainder of this article, that is because it is material for members only. So if you are a member, you need to log in (top right of the page), if not, join now, it's free. Just click here ...

What to Do If Your Potential Isn’t Being Realized

 

Today ...

Are you crushing it...knocking the ball out of the park...and off to a blazing start?

Or...are you repeating the same patterns as last year...barely squeaking by...and in serious need of more, better and faster results?

Regardless of your answer, I'm going to share with you a simple, seven-step strategy for taking your performance to an entirely new level.

I just used it to evaluate my YTD performance and implementing the feedback into my plans for the month of February.

It's called an AFTER ACTION REVIEW (AAR), and it's purpose is to...

1. Celebrate and sustain strengths as you must reinforce the tactics and strategies responsible for winning.

2. Identify and correct deficiencies as it is imperative that you analyze behaviors which are compromising performance.

3. Focus on opportunities to exploit and goals to pursue for the remaining 335 days of the year.

DO IT NOW

To best position yourself, your family and business for the remainder of the year, you NEED to perform an AAR and analyze what took place in the first half of the year, and...YOU NEED TO DO IT NOW!
You NEED to identify every nugget of knowledge your past performance offers and milk it for all it's worth.

Please note the special emphasis on the word NEED, as if you hesitate to do this exercise or simply choose to delete this message, you'll most certainly pay the heavy price associated with neglect, ignorance and immaturity.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people and companies don't learn enough from their mistakes or their accomplishments.

It's like everyone is simply plugging along with their heads down, and it's Ground Hog Day all over again.

But, instead of repeating the same day over and again, both companies and individuals continue to repeat the same undermining attitudes, the same unproductive strategies and keep getting the same under-performing results.

IT"S TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK

You and I both know that no matter how good or bad your results have been these past 30 days - you can always do better—MUCH BETTER!

Yet, the single biggest key to improving both your performance and your results seems to go ignored by almost everybody. If you want to perform at the top of your game you NEED to review, analyze, and learn from what has already happened.

MASTER THESE SEVEN STEPS

There are seven steps in the AAR process, and you must begin implementing the ideas that you are about to generate...IMMEDIATELY.

Step 1 - Identify Your Three Greatest Accomplishments in the year so far.
Even if the first month of the year has been a challenging one for you, odds are...if you look close enough, there's something to be proud of.

Step 2 - Analyze What You Learned from Each Accomplishment?
Now that you have identified your three greatest accomplishments, go back to each one. This time though identify exactly what you learned or were reminded of by each of them.

Step 3 - Identify Your Biggest Disappointments in the year until now.
Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That's a shame because this is where the best learning comes from.

Step 4 - Analyze What You Learned from Each Failure or Disappointment.
No matter how great everything in life is going -we all make mistakes. The trick here is to analyze them, what preceded them, what could you have done differently and determine how can you prevent them from reoccurring in the future.

Step 5 - Identify How You Limited Yourself and How Can You Stop It?
Were there certain actions you took or didn't take that came back to haunt you?
In order to make sure you don't limit yourself again - you need to bring these self-defeating actions and self-limiting beliefs to the surface,confront them, and most importantly determine what you must do differently to make sure you don't make the same mistakes all over again.

Step 6 - Pragmatically Review the Information You Have Gathered?
The goal of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better, but to actually use the information to make certain that you are best positioned for a strong first quarter and year, and that you have an actionable plan that far surpasses anything you have done in the first 30 days of 2015.

HOW DID YOU DO?

  • What are the big takeaways from answering each question?
  • What do you know about yourself or your business that you didn't realize or weren't thinking about?

Obviously, having this list isn't going to do it all, you still need to take this new knowledge and USE IT!
Fortunately, that's what the last question is centered around.
And here it is...

Step 7 - Determine How to Use This Information to Astonish Yourself in the year that is left

The purpose here is to build into your schedule,your interactions, your management style or whatever else you've surfaced in the previous questions and build yourself a new, better approach.
Okay, now that we've uncovered a lot of useful information, the final step is to incorporate it into a game plan for crushing the first quarter of the year.

My goal is simply to help you achieve yours, and the single best thing I can do for you (now that the first half of the year is in the history books) is to impress upon you the importance and URGENCY of this AAR discipline.

Implementing the seven steps of the AAR before you get into work on Monday will go a long way in helping you making this the best year of your life.

I wish for you a lifetime of abundance, prosperity and ever increasing opportunity.

One where you make sure...

Everything Counts!

Gary Ryan Blair

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Teachers and Tornadoes

Once I got past the awe of witnessing Mother Nature’s astonishing power to wreak devastation in Oklahoma, I was awed by something more positive and uplifting: the instinctive capacity of our species to care about, come to the aid of, and — for those caught in the middle of the calamity — to even sacrifice their own lives for others.

Every day we are surrounded by examples of the dark side of human nature — selfishness, greed, dishonesty and cruelty — which make it hard to resist cynicism. It’s a pity that it often takes a disaster and the heroic actions it evokes to provide compelling contrary evidence, to remind us of the best in human nature.

How can one resist tears hearing of the teachers in Oklahoma who put themselves at risk by shielding children with their own bodies? 

I suspect lots of other adults would have reacted in a similar fashion, but I think teachers really are special.

With the current focus on competence and accountability in education, we tend to undervalue one of the most important qualities of most teachers: their genuine sense of responsibility and affection for the children they teach.

Over and over we’ve seen the powerful instinct of teachers to protect children in school shootings and, more recently, in the horrific tornadoes.

Teachers willingly and without hesitation treated children as their own and put themselves at risk to protect them.

It should be a comfort to parents to know how much teachers really care.

Henry Adams once said, “Teachers affect all eternity. You never know where their influence stops.” He was referring to the way they shape lives by transmitting information and learning skills, but teachers often do so much more. Though only rarely called upon to risk their lives, they regularly touch the lives of students with their commitment and love.

It’s been said that kids don’t care what you know unless they know that you care. Let’s do all we can to commend, congratulate and celebrate teachers who show how much they care.

Remember, character counts.

Michael Josephson
www.whatwillmatter.com

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Getting Started


Chris's parents were proud of him when he graduated from college. But it's been six months and he hasn't gotten a job yet. In fact, he hasn't looked seriously. He has no idea what he wants to do and he's thinking of grad school.

He's living at home with his parents and things are getting tense, especially with his father, who accuses Chris of being lazy and afraid to enter the real world.

Chris thinks his dad is being totally unreasonable. After all, he's only young once and he needs some "space." During a recent argument, Chris said, "I'm not you, Dad. I have my own way of doing things. I want a job I enjoy."

His dad replied, "That's a nice idea, but in the end they call it 'work' because it's about making a productive living - not having fun."

There are many youngsters like Chris who are having trouble getting started with a serious job and becoming self-reliant. 

Some, like Peter Pan, just don't want to grow up. Some are afraid of making a wrong decision or of being rejected. Others are victims of what psychologists call "magical thinking." They believe that when the time is right, everything will fall into place. So they wait for opportunity to come knocking or until they feel inspired or excited about their next step.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. What's crucial is to begin. Things happen and opportunities appear most often when we're moving, not standing still.

Momentum is vital. Basic physics says it's easier to alter the course of a moving object than to start movement initially. In the end, it's not really about finding yourself. It's about making yourself.

The first steps are the hardest, but the key to success in anything is getting started.

Author:  Michael Josephson
Read more of his stories at www.charactercounts.org

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"People who soar, are those who refuse to sit back and wish things would change." 
Charles R. Swindoll


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Do You Recognize Resistance When You See It?

Do you recognise resitance when you see it?

 

So, I'm trying to lose some weight. And I notice that the days that I declare to myself, "No sugar today," I end up eating sugar earlier than ever. I actually forget that I have even made myself this promise...usually until just a moment after the sugar is melting from my tongue.

Can you relate? Maybe not in this area, but we all have places where we do not keep promises to ourselves. Where do you do this?

Not following through on commitments is a form of resistance. You can probably see clearly how this resistance might sabotage my efforts toward my goal.

My resistance is brilliant. It continually takes new and different forms and is quite good at disguising itself and finding new ways to outsmart me. Your resistance is brilliant, too.

Resistance will keep us from achieving what we want and need. Worse than that, resistance has the power to sending us and our businesses careening in exactly the opposite direction.

Whether you are a leader in an organization or in your own life, anytime you find yourself in a change situation, you will find resistance. If you don't, you are not looking hard enough. It is the way of things. You will resist. Your staff will resist. Your boss will resist. Your clients will resist. Potential employers will resist. Your family will resist. The higher the stakes, the more resistance you will find.

If we are not aware that resistance is at work, resistance wins. But only 100% of the time.

Your only hope of overcoming resistance is to expect it

Your only hope of overcoming resistance is to expect it. But even that isn't enough. You also have to value it and embrace it. You have to work with your resistance, not against it.

 

You have to get intimate with resistance. And that starts with recognizing it. Here's what you want to look for:

Obvious resistance is easy to spot:

Refusal

Arguing

Disruptive behavior The most powerful forms of resistance are usually much more subtle:

Not being available

Not getting started

Getting distracted and not completing

Offering misleading information

Bringing up other issues

Becoming very busy with something else

Getting sick

Anger

Irritation

Frustration

Confusion

Criticism

Silence

Feigning acceptance, without asking necessary questions or working out the details

Finding reasons to be removed from the task

Surfing the web

Compulsively checking your BlackBerry or iPhone

Oh yeah, and forgetting.

Which of these do you do? Which do you see the people you work with doing? Which do you see in your clients? Start noticing the signs of resistance in you and the people around you.

Remember resistance is very creative.

Next time, we'll talk about a few ways to work with your resistance.

 

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Sharon Rich works with organizations and people approaching major change. Just look at the spectacular corporate failures of the past decade to see that talent and intelligence aren't enough to create success. Sharon helps leaders to get the specific tools, skills and perspectives they need to create successful change and make it stick. For more information and to get a complimentary copy of her article "6 WAYS LEADERS SABOTAGE CHANGE and 5 Principles Change Leaders Need Now," go tohttp://www.leadershipincorporated.com/Free_Stuff.html

6 Time Management Techniques For Crazy Creativity

 

At first glance, "crazy creativity" and "time management techniques" seem to contradict each other. Of course it's not very creative to live enslaved to a fixed schedule. However living surrounded by a "creative chaos", you can easily become distracted and feel overwhelmed if you have a lot of things that you need to keep in mind. To prevent that from happening, check out the 6 best time management techniques to get your mind clear:

1. Be Aware That Time Management Is Actually Self Management
When we say "time management", we actually mean "self management". Time will pass regardless whether you manage it or not. What we need to do is improve our own behavior, in order to increase our focus and productivity.

2. Know Your Prime Time
Everyone has their own biological rhythm. Most people are able to work best in the mornings, others in the afternoon, still others (like myself) in the early evening or even at night. One of the most important time management skills is to be aware of your biological clock, and not to force yourself to work against it.

3. Activate Your Subconscious Mind
Before going to sleep each night, write down or go over your planned tasks for the next day. This will get your subconscious mind to process your plans while you are sleeping. Often, the next morning you will wake up with new ideas and inspirations.

4. Set Written Goals
Make sure you write your long-term goals down somewhere. This will help you to focus and actually achieve them. I never got into the habit of setting goals until I started writing them down, however once I did, I started to achieve many of them without even having to think about them a lot.

5. Have A To-Do-List
The most important habit for time management is to have a list where you keep track of all your small and large tasks, and tick them off once you achieve them. This does wonders for keeping your mind clear, allowing you to focus on the task at hand. Whenever inspiration strikes and you have a new idea, add it to the list, so no creative thought ever gets forgotten.

You can use pen and paper for your to-do-list or a text file on your computer. However, over time these lists have a tendency to multiply and paradoxically, you will spend time managing your time management lists. If you want to be really efficient, you may want to try a task management software to make sure you have all your data in one spot. (Click on the link towards the end of the video.)

6. Prioritize efficiently
Start your day with a couple easier tasks, just to make a dent in your daily to-do-list. This is great for motivation. Once you got the little tasks done, focus on whatever task will advance you most towards your goals. Don't try to get as much stuff done as possible, try to make as much progress as possible.

Put together, these time management techniques really help to get things done.

 

Author unknown.