Five Personal Strategies to Combat Information Bombardment
According to research from the Institute for Intellectual Capital Research, the average knowledge worker receives 84 emails in a twenty-four hour period.
- (1888PressRelease) October 29, 2011 - Hamilton, Canada - The personal pressures people experience in the knowledge era are enormous, many experts agree. But fortunately, there are several easy strategies that can help people survive today's onslaught of information.
"Today, all of the world's total codified information doubles every eleven hours!" says Dr. Nick Bontis, international keynote speaker, leading academic researcher, and author of "Information Bombardment: Rising Above the Digital Onslaught." "If we want to survive, we have to adapt efficient information-processing behaviors. This practice is important not only for businesses and companies but also for individuals."
According to Dr. Bontis, the speed at which information overload has evolved has hindered us from learning effective information-management techniques. In our haste to grab as much data as possible, we failed to learn how to prioritize the information we want over that we don't want.
The average Internet user has multiple e-mail accounts to accommodate the more than thirty-one billion e-mail messages sent daily. According to McAfee's Internet Security, more than ninety percent of these e-mails are spam.
"Information bombardment has taught us how to scan a sender and subject line efficiently," Dr. Bontis says. "We can receive an e-mail and decide within 1.2 seconds whether or not to delete it. But how many must we go through before we get to a piece of information we really want to read?"
According to research from the Institute for Intellectual Capital Research, the average knowledge worker receives 84 emails in a twenty-four hour period and that number is expted to rise significantly over the next few years. Dr. Bontis worries that this total will soon become unmanageable.
Dr. Bontis offers five effective strategies to help us manage information bombardment through our e-mail systems. These include:
* Using prioritization markers to place wanted information at the top of the inbox
* Auto-foldering rule wizards that automatically place e-mails in folders upon receipt
* Requiring descriptive subjects for e-mails to assist scanning and organization
* Customizing e-mail messages according to recipient preferences
* Enhancing speed-reading skills to facilitate information processing
"The key is not to shut ourselves off from information, because information is a priceless commodity today," Dr. Bontis says. "Instead we need to adapt our skills to filter out the noise so we can access the information we need. In other words, we have to get smarter in how we handle all the data being thrown at us."
In his book, Dr. Bontis offers individual strategies to combat information bombardment as well as solutions for groups, businesses, and corporations. He believes the information age is still in its infancy, so we had better learn to adapt sooner rather than later.
About the author:
Dr. Nick Bontis was named a 2010 top five speaker worldwide for management and one of the world's top management gurus of 2010, along with such luminaries as Jack Welch, Tom Peters, Michael Porter, and Jim Collins. He is an internationally sought-after management consultant and keynote speaker, hand-picked by the United Nations, the US Navy, Microsoft, IBM, Accenture, KPMG, Century 21, and others to help navigate the knowledge era. He is a popular TV and radio personality, a leading academic researcher, and an award-winning, tenured professor of strategic management at McMaster University. As one of the world's most-cited authors in the fields of intellectual capital and knowledge management, he has amassed over a dozen prestigious teaching and research awards. He was recently recognized as a 3M National Teaching Fellow, an exclusive honor bestowed upon the top professors in the nation.
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