5 Tips To Help With Information Overload

Given the amount of information leaders and managers have to deal with on a daily basis I found the following 5 tips to help us deal with the information overload from PsychCentral useful, especially chunking which I have found to be very effective….

1. Reduce your information intake. The truth is that you probably don’t need a great deal of the information you’re taking in, because you’re randomly choosing some bits here and there.
2. Consume information more systematically instead of randomly. If you focus on what you need rather than what others think you want, you may be surprised at how much you can cut out of your online time.
3. Divide entertainment time online from work time. Many people who suffer from “information overload” do so because they have blurred “working” online from “having fun” online, and have given up the distinctions between the two.
4. Set time limits. Information overload sometimes is reinforced by not setting limits on the amount of time we allow information to be taken in by our brains. If we are open to information 24 hours a day, we give our brains no time to relax, to change modes, to have fun.
5. Chunk your information. Being a consumer of information means becoming better at learning how to consume that information more intelligently. If you take in every bit of information with equal weight, it becomes harder to sort, harder to keep track of. Psychologists call this “chunking,” and it just means putting information into groups to better organize it. In the U.S., we group our telephone numbers into 3 groups — a 3 digit area code, a 3 digit prefix, and a 4 digit suffix. This method for remembering a phone numbers divides a long 10 digit number into 3 more easily managed “chunks” of information that our brain has a better time storing for long-term use. You can use the same method for keeping track of any new information from anywhere — online, remembering people’s names when introduced, you name it. Organize it into smaller, more easily managed chunks, and you’ll find it’ll stick longer.

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Lifehack, GTD, Information, Productivity

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