As well as building the Unified Inbox  software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter :

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

 

 

To paraphrase Sir Winston, e-mail is the worst form of messaging
except for all the others that have been tried.  
Jonathan Spira

Brain Health, Stress and Overload
Information Fatigue Syndrome, is a new ‘Syndrome’ which many people are experiencing. Some symptoms include increased anxiety, sleeplessness, less leisure time and less enjoyment when we do take leisure due to multi-tasking, and our brain always working.

 Ban email, fly pigeons!  
Will Breton’s announcement set off a new trend, given that it is quite fashionable to groan about email overloads? Tech journalist Mike Arrington wrote sometime ago that he routinely declares ‘email bankruptcy’. That is, unable to cope with the thousands of emails landing in his inbox, he often closes his eyes and deletes them in one go, only to make space for the next deluge 

Company ban on email gives employees a break, and maybe a different type of headache  
In case you were too busy catching up on email last week and missed the media interest in the news, the French company Atos has banned internal email. Or will, over the next 18 months, as it phases out the tool for its employees. The company’s CEO, Thierry Breton, said that because only about 10 percent of the messages his employees receive is worth their time, and because too many of his people spend hours every night sifting through the internal e-mail they get every day, he’s getting rid of the stuff. Completely. 

Should we send work email to the trash?  
Email has moved from being the internet’s first killer app to being a productivity killer. You can make news by claiming to hate it, ban it or kill it.

London taxi drivers offer window into human brain's flexibility  
Talk about information overload: becoming a taxi driver in London means memorizing all of the sightseeing destinations the city has to offer, plus the names and locations of 25,000 streets within a six-mile (9.6 kilometer) radius. 

How To Reduce Information Overload
Yet another report has come out telling us what we pretty much already know. Many workers feel overwhelmed by the deluge of emails and information they are confronted with on a daily basis. 

What would Socrates think of Google?
I was discussing with a college student I’ve been advising whether it was a good or a bad thing that Google makes access to answers so easy. To my surprise, she opined that it’s a bad thing.

With the Gregorian calendar clicking over to a new year, many of us are thinking about our New Year's resolutions – those vaguely worded intentions to be a better person in some fashion or other.

For others the top resolutions are losing weight (interesting enough the least achieved resolution), exercise more, quit smoking, save more and to just be better somehow (volunteer, be less grumpy, keep a journal – you know how these go).

What is interesting about the New Year's resolution phenomenon is that a massive majority of people fail to keep their resolution – we're talking here about 88% of people making a promise to themselves that they don't keep.

So why do only 12% of people fulfill on their promises to themselves?

It seems it comes down to some pretty basic brain/body chemistry. The part of our body that regulates will-power is not that strong. When asked to resist temptation it burns up energy, and that energy has to be replaced if we are not to give in .

But there are strategies that are considered successful for dealing with temptation (in terms of resolutions you're trying to keep). The most successful strategy is distraction – whatever you do, don't think about the thing you're trying not to do. Thinking about what you can't do or have just tires you out and leaves you vulnerable to giving in. Instead make sure that whenever the subject of the thing you're trying not to do comes up, that you have an alternative to do or to think about.

If you're dead set on keeping your resolutions this year – and we've got 7 that we think are a good idea coming up this week – then you need to make sure that you include a plan for the following with the resolution itself:

 

1. Make sure that you have definite goals.

2. Acknowledge that you can only make resolutions for yourself – don't include others in them – because ultimately the only person in this universe you have any control over is yourself.

3. Make sure that the goal you set is realistic.

4. Don't try to change the world – moderation is the key.

5. Take the time to know yourself, so that the goal you set is one that you are capable of achieving.

 

Over the new few days we've going to publish the seven New Year's resolutions that we're actively working on. Like our Facebook page to get updates as we publish these over the next few days.

 

As well as building the Unified Inbox  software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter :

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

 

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.
Bonnie Friedman.

A third of adults go online each day for no particular reason
Internet is just there, dangling over our heads like a mobile full of planets and kitties and smiley faces, and we're just staring up at it from our cribs like a bunch of little babies. 

188,000,000,000 emails, 60,000,000 facebook updates, 140,000,000 tweets per day

Six top tips on email overload
Six top tips on email overload... How to achieve more efficient use of email, by two experts

Email Overload? Reclaim Your Inbox, Don’t Banish It
Excessive information (including email) is a danger to productivity. It diverts attention, derails trains of thought and increases stress. However, considering Mr. Breton’s concern over the reported high level of distraction caused by reading unnecessary email messages, I’m rather surprised at the alternatives being proposed 

Zero Email Has Zero Chance, But How About An Email Diet?
Atos CEO Thierry Breton is banning company email.There’s been a lot of recent press coverage about a French company’s decision to become a “zero email” company by 2013.

You've Got Mail (But Don't Read It) : One Third of Emails Unread
I recently read that Brits receive an average of 36 emails every day but a third is never read. I wasn't surprised.

Information Overload Is Causing Illness and Costing Money, Experts Warn
The culture of modern business needs to change, with workers drowning under a deluge of emails and information, experts warned Monday 

Seven Steps to Lower Information Overload
How to keep yourself sane and functional in a world awash in data. There’s a lot being said about the problem of information overload, but not much being actually done about it.

10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload
Communication is as important as it used to be, there's just way too much of it. Communication is out of control and it's killing our productivity and effectiveness. Here's how to make it stop.

7 Steps to Dealing with Information Overload
How do we know what to focus on? How can we deem what is relevant, newsworthy, or beneficial to the maintenance of our employment status without checking it out? How do we deal with info overload?

Is technology driving you crazy - or is it really your staff?
Businesses that are serious about tackling information overload need to look beyond the technology and change their company culture, says silicon.com's Steve Ranger. I once had a colleague who had a policy of only reading email if it was addressed to him and him alone.

Stress: the curse of modern technology revealed in poll
It seems as though our ability to evolve wisely is not keeping pace with the technological revolution, and that all the wonderful new technologies that we have come to rely on are controlling many of us.

Technology as a Solution: Managing Information Overload
Julie Wedgwood introduced her talk session titled “Managing Information Overload” by speaking about how much information comes our way every single day and how that could impact the way we introduce social networking into our (learning) business 

 

As well as building the Unified Inbox  software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter :

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Not what you possess but what you do with what you have,
determines your true worth - Thomas Carlyle

Clay Johnson on info overload vs. info overconsumption.
We assign blame for our overconsumption in odd ways. Gulp down one too many cupcakes and that's 100% on you. Yet, if you're overwhelmed by the fire hose/deluge/tsunami of information, blame must be placed elsewhere: on those glutton-minded information sources or the overall degradation of society or ... anywhere really, as long as it doesn't reflect back on your own lack of control. Information overload seems to always be someone else's fault. 

How Information Overload is Causing Brain Congestion
I visited him in the lab in Sao Paulo recently and he told me that we humans are suffering from information  indigestion. “We became informivores. We eat information all the time,” he said. Which can produce some unfortunate side effects: “If you eat too much information your brain can’t digest it.” 

5 Cool Ideas for avoiding information overload
The good news is that we live in an information age. The bad news is that there seems to be way too much information. Here are 5 Cool Ideas for avoiding information overload.

Information overload wastes two weeks a year
British workers have to sift through so many emails and electronic documents  that they waste nearly two weeks a year searching for information they have  previously read but then lost.

Email response expectations leading to stress: report
A new report has found that technology is accelerating email response times, creating unrealistic expectations, email overload, error and costly workplace stress. Author of Brilliant Email, published by Pearson in 2011, email management expert Dr Monica Seeley points out that a few years ago a response to an email was expected within a few days or even a week.

Lightening the load on your email inbox  
Email can be a useful tool, but the sheer volume can be overwhelming. This year, around 349 billion emails will be sent worldwide, according to the market research firm Radicati Group Inc. That total is expected to grow to 507 billion by 2013.

6 Ways to Stop Email Overload
A recent report from market research firm The Radicati Group offers some sobering statistics about email use. The number of global email accounts is expected to grow from 3.1 billion in 2011 to almost 4.1 billion by the end of 2015 — an average annual growth rate of 7 percent. Radicati estimates that roughly 350 billion emails will be sent worldwide this year and that the number will increase to 507 billion by 2013. 

Shocker: Most Americans Check Work Email During Holidays  
The majority of employed American adults (68%) with work email accounts check their messages during traditional family holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Among those checking their email, 27% do so multiple times each day. Those checking their accounts are not likely to find empty inboxes as 79% of those polled say they receive emails from clients or colleagues during the holidays.

Too much information: Data overload at work damages staff motivation, survey of 2,000 employees
Employees in the UK are “drowning in droplets rather than floods of data” at work, and are struggling to navigate, organise and digest this collectively, which is costing businesses. 

Do the Digital Natives burn out because of technological overload?  
Do the internet, the constant accessibility and the opportunity of being online 24/7 result in overload? And are particularly the Digital Natives at the risk of burning out early in their career.