Comments on: The Problem is not Information Overload

By: Nathan Zeldes

Nathan Zeldes — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:10:31 +0000

The way I frame this argument is that what causes overlaod and stress is QUEUED messaging, i.e. incoming information that one is expected by convention or duty to screen or process, and that piles up in a queue – the Inbox – until dispositioned. Email is of course like that; by contrast RSS feeds, Twitter and the like don’t carry such an expectation: you skim them, and what you ignore just slides out of your attention sphere. That’s why I strongly support moving non-critical communication to RSS…

By: PM Hut

PM Hut — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:14:29 +0000

The problem is scrolling through those 300 emails and seeing which ones you need to reply to and which ones you don’t. Let’ say to scan an email it takes a normal person 15 seconds, and to reply to an email it’s 10 minutes. 15 * 300 = 1.25 hours. Assuming that 10% of those 300 emails require a reply, that’s 300 minutes = 6 hours. So you spend 7.25 hours just on your emails/day, when you get around 300 emails.

As a Project Manager, I learned a good trick which is to avoid replying to emails in the morning, as replying will ensue a reply back, which requires another reply back from me, etc… Complete waste of time. I usually start replying at 4:00 PM, so the other person won’t have time to reply back and expect a reply to his reply… The other person has to be concise as much as possible in his reply. This accelerates communication and removes a lot of overhead.

By: Philippe Laval

Philippe Laval — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:05:21 +0000

Great post.

For Kelly, yes, you are right, no way a software can make this kind of decision. However, what a software like Kwaga (I’m from Kwaga too) can do is target the mails that contain actionable stuff by using natural language processing. Is it a meeting? Is there a specific request? Is it an answer to something you ask or merely a thanks?

That way you can focus on a narrower set of mails and decide which are really worthwhile your immediate attention.

By: Hemanth

Hemanth — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:13:44 +0000

Good article. The analogy of walking in the woods was spot on.

By: Ishu Khurana

Ishu Khurana — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:49:45 +0000

‘Information overload’ is definitely not a ‘culprit’, root of the challenge is to parse through available information and distill it, to resolve ‘purpose behind the search’.

By: Priyanka D

Priyanka D — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:34:22 +0000

Good read, interesting analogy of walking in the woods!

By: jason

jason — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:42:48 +0000

What an amazing post by David.
How important it is to call ‘call a spade a spade’. Bu using words such as ‘time management’ and ‘information overload’ we are not facing up to the real issue – it is a subtle and powerful form of denial.
David explains how ‘information overload’ is actually ‘decision overload’ (David uses the reference ‘assigning meaning’).
As such the ability to make decisions, or assign meaning – is where I get bogged down.
My clarity fades from any given day or even time, and when I am not clear, I don’t feel I can make a decision about where things should go, or what to do with things.
And the end result – an overload of stuff I haven’t decided on.
I need to have a clearer mind more regularly in order to manage this.

By: Kelly Forrister

Kelly Forrister — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:25:37 +0000

Hi Joshua,

I’d be curious to see how you guys have figured out how to have a piece of software ever match the intuitive intelligence of a person making a decision. I’ve never seen it.

So while I am not surprised technically you can come up with something that can intelligently parse input, I would be dubious to recommend anyone delegate their decision making process.

Kelly Forrister
GTD Coach & Presenter

By: Joshua Eckblad

Joshua Eckblad — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:09:30 +0000

This is precisely the approach we’ve taken to help people see what matters most in their Inboxes. http://www.Kwaga.com launched trials in October 2009 and is working to release the beginnings of a full product by April 2010. Rather than looking at your Inbox incessantly and reading the mix of important and trivial, why not let an automatic email assistant show you just the important new emails.

By: Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:34:45 +0000

I once heard Paul Dourish share an interesting and relevant quote during the Q&A of a CSCW 2006 conference panel on email overload:

“One of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought forth into the world.”

— Barnaby Rich (1580-1617), writing in 1613 (!); quoted by de Solla Price in his 1963 book “Little Science, Big Science.”

By: Carl Dierschow

Carl Dierschow — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:52:36 +0000

“The e-mail beast is out of the barn, and it’s going to be nearly impossible to shove it back in.”

We might need to question this common assumption. I find that my kids don’t use e-mail very much at all. Partially because they’re not in information-based jobs, but also because they’re developing different ways of interacting with their networks.

So I’m wondering if maybe e-mail WILL die someday.