Accept you are suffering from information overload
March 9, 2009
I remember my school days when it was hard to get information on a subject. Information was expensive and information was king. Then came the internet era and Information overload came into our lives. Now, my regular workday starts with checking emails on three separate accounts, checking Facebook and LinkedIn.
In theory, it sounds great to have any information available to me just by clicking and typing few words in my browser. This information was never available to a small business owner before. But what is the point of all this information? Everyone else have access to the same information as well. So where is the competitive advantage? What can we do about it?
First step in solving any problem is accepting that you have a problem.
I know that I am spending a lot of time on unnecessary things and tasks in my daily life. I don’t know the solution yet, but at least I have admitted it is a serious problem for my business and for my daily life. I am opening it for discussion and potential solutions to information overload.
Entry Filed under: Business Strategy, Life in general. .
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1.
Arun Rawat | March 10, 2009 at 4:07 pm
You hit it right on point Jatinder. We got to find a solution for information overload. This is ruining my life and business
2.
marshaegan01 | March 13, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Congratulations! It is truly the first step to recognize that there is a problem. There are solutions, and despite what most people want to believe, they are not technological.
It is about managing yourself, and the ability to stand back and look at all the tasks you have to do, and decide which ones are the most important. I think one of the most important starts is for you to take the power back — too many people look up every time an e-mail is received, and check their blackberries every waking minute. When you decide that you own your life, rather than technology around owning you, you’ve actually got a chance…
We have all gotten drawn in to this trap. Turn the dang ding off! Good luck!
3.
jatinder | March 14, 2009 at 1:20 am
Arun – Thank you for leaving your comments. I am glad you have taken the first step (the hardest step) by recognizing the problem. I know you will find the solution as well. Stay tuned and Good Luck!
marshaegan01 – You bring in some very interesting points and practical solutions that everyone can benefit from. “To stand back and look at all the tasks you have to do, and decide which ones are the most important” is easier said than done. Information Overload is a situation when more information is available than our brains can easily process. This makes absorption of information difficult and hinders our decision-making and judgments. In this situation it is very hard for people to stand back and look at all the tasks and to focus on only important ones.
Once we have taken the first time to recognize there is a problem. Next logical step will be to identify its root cause.
Wikipedia has listed seven general causes of information overload:
1. A rapidly increasing rate of new information being produced
2. The ease of duplication and transmission of data across the Internet
3. An increase in the available channels of incoming information (e.g. telephone, e-mail, instant messaging, rss)
4. Large amounts of historical information to dig through
5. Contradictions and inaccuracies in available information
6. A low signal-to-noise ratio
7. A lack of a method for comparing and processing different kinds of information
This look likes a good list but does not offer much in terms of finding a practical solution to the problem. This list is a good starting point but I don’t believe we can still identify the root cause. So let’s think a little more and come up with more causes and we will try to tackle the problem together.
Since one of the causes of information overload is information sharing and collaboration, I believe its solution will also come through working collaboratively on this problem.
4.
david | April 17, 2009 at 12:45 am
…life is suffering
5.
david | April 17, 2009 at 12:48 am
“semantic web” can potentially mitigate some of the information overload burden
6.
david | April 17, 2009 at 1:32 am
Since the mid-1970s, researchers in the field of artificial intelligence have recognized that capturing knowledge is the key to building large and powerful AI systems. AI researchers argued that they could create new ontologies as computational models that enable certain kinds of automated reasoning. In the 1980s, the AI community began to use the term ontology to refer to both a theory of a modeled world and a component of knowledge systems. Some researchers, drawing inspiration from philosophical ontologies, viewed computational ontology as a kind of applied philosophy.[6]
7.
Jatinder | April 18, 2009 at 11:29 pm
David – Thank you for your comments.
I am not sure how your single statement “Life is suffering” applies to the topic I am discussing. There was a lot of suffering when Buddha discovered this first noble truth. However, I am not sure if information overload was one of them.
Even though your statement seems pessimistic, I am sure it will lead us to some solution.
Buddha taught us four noble truths:
1. Life means suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is attachment.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The path to the cessation of suffering.
In simple terms, there is suffering, there is a root cause for suffering, there is an end of suffering, and there is a path that puts an end to suffering. These four truths, taken as a whole form a practical problem-solving approach. This means you first identify a problem and then look for its root cause. Next, you put an end to the problem by eliminating the root cause.
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Only time will tell if semantic web will mitigate or boost information overload burden.
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8.
david | April 19, 2009 at 12:04 am
when we find that we have a problem, we often look for more data. we ask more questions which leads to more questions. scholars will sometimes deem certain questions “no longer useful.”
it has becomes important to find a way to mine huge amounts of data for more applicable or precise information:
4. Large amounts of historical information to dig through.
semantic data mining seems promising if it can be developed to the point of AI. if it can not, it will simply be more meta tags in a sea of data. but at least we have tried to walk a path to cessation of suffering. action may not necessarily lead to happiness but without action there can be no happiness
9.
Jatinder | April 19, 2009 at 12:36 am
Interesting. Two solutions are being proposed that are exact opposites and contradictory.
marshaegan01 is suggesting we should own our life rather than technology owning us. David is suggesting technology (Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence) is the answer. Quite Contradictory solutions? Or are they the same?
10.
david | April 19, 2009 at 12:55 am
i agree with marshaegan01 regarding “Turn the dang ding off! ”
let the call go into vm, that’s what it’s there for. apple has given us visual vm so we can prioritize that aspect of technology. my point is that, when one finds it necessary to search for data, why not try to develop a tool that will produce relevant information… we need to find ways to selectively use our technology tools rather than use all of them all of the time. we have paperless environments and paper back ups! this is silly. most people are too timid to commit to a path that eliminates redundancy… when we find a tool that fixes a problem, it is imperative (assuming one seeks efficiency) to eliminate the old tool and not use both in tandem