Information overload in modern workplace communications

¶ … OVERLOAD -- ARTICLE REVIEW

Hemp, P. "Information Overload: New Research and Novel Techniques

offer a Lifeline to You and Your Organization." Harvard Business Review, Sept/2009: 83-89.

Brief Summary

According to the author, one of the downsides to the digital revolution and the ubiquity of Internet and Intranet instant communications connectivity is that it has evolved into a communications systems that has begun to frustrate it own purpose. Specifically, computer-based communications applications, (principally, email), were originally conceived as mechanisms to facilitate the efficiency of modern business by expediting communications. Instead, they have become a serious drain on precious resources such as time and employee attention to primary tasks.

The author suggests that email and other communications-based applications (including social networking sites, texting, and twittering) now typically require too much time necessary for managing communications information. Constant emails absorb too great an amount of working time to be ignored by organizations. Moreover, the amount of time lost to managing communications information also includes additional time by virtue of the time ordinarily required to re-establish focus on whatever tasks are interrupted by the need to check or respond to email.

The author describes several approaches to resolving the problem. Some of them relay on formal "all-or-none" rules; others rely more on technological tools to help manage communications automatically. Some of the authors advice seems unlikely to be helpful; the rest is (or should be) somewhat obvious to most people. In some respects, much of the author's advice may relate more to errors of perception and perspective than to problems that actually require "solutions."

and Communication Styles, and Organizational Issues

The author describes several different approaches to solutions. One method is to impose a specific rule limiting daily email checking to a particular number of times; another involves the "O" rule, to simply always maintain an empty email in-box. Apparently, some people become so overwhelmed by this problem that they spontaneously martyr their in-boxes, simply deleting everything instead of organizing it or sorting through it.

Even leading software manufacturers have begun working on the problem. Potential solutions such as software capable of interpreting keystroke patterns (and other measurable patterns of user activity) has been developed to manage email notifications automatically. In principle, the computer system would consider whether or not the user is currently busy and suspend any immediate notification of incoming messages so as not to interrupt the user.

Other suggestions for dealing with email and other electronic communications have more to do with behaviors intended to reduce unnecessary exchanges or habits that waste small amounts of time so often that it adds up to a non-inconsequential amount, particularly when multiplied by the total number of affected employees. These include pasting attachments into the body of emails to save the receiver the time of opening attachments; making extensive use of the subject field for short messages that do not have to be opened; and in the choice of content of messages, such as by using specific instead of open-ended questions that invite longer exchanges to communicate the same information capable of being transmitted in one or two exchanges.

Assessment of Problem Resolution

The author's suggested solutions involving formal rules that impose arbitrary limitations on how many times to check email could work, but probably only for users with the ability to break long-standing behaviors and habits "cold turkey" so to speak. Even for them, the use of these approaches has potential pitfalls, as does relying on software solutions. For one example, self-imposed moratoria on checking email could easily result in delayed responses to very important emails (and other messages) that should not be filtered out (even temporarily) by software. Changing behavioral protocols for electronic communications could be very helpful, particularly where users collaborate to minimize informational overload on both ends.

However, it is difficult to understand how these measures are supposed to work when most email applications already provide such a wide range of tools intended to enable the user to manage information. Most computer users are proficient with only core functions and tasks of which their email management needs are capable. Simply learning how to make efficient use of the unused features they already have on their systems would probably go a long way toward solving the problem of information overload.

Finally, it also distinctly possible that the problem of information overload is not as serious as the authors argues. In that respect, consider the evolution of the role of telephones in the early twentieth century. At that time, some observers worried that the instantaneous telephonic communications turned everybody into a "servant" who had to run to respond to the sound of a ringing bell. Over time, telephones were incorporated much more smoothly into society. In all likelihood, a decade from now, standard electronic information etiquette and professional protocols for communications information management will put the current problem into more optimistic perspective.