Information Overload Impacts Top Executives

Basex, a leading knowledge management firm, asked top executives to explain the impact of information overload on their work:

Tips to Manage Information Overload:

1. At the start of each work day, take a few minutes to identify that day’s business-critical actions. Guard both your schedule and your media intake so random interruptions do not disrupt your work plan.
2. Determine how often you need to check email, and only check it at your pre-determined intervals.
3. If you cannot respond to an email in under 3 minutes, set it aside, and answer it in the time block you have allotted that day for email.
4. Set your instant message client to invisible, or unavailable, if you need to concentrate.
5. Let voice mail answer your office and cell phone when you need full focus.

While information access is wonderful, each of us needs to guard our time and productivity.

Conversely, as business writers, we must realize this is the environment into which we write. To cut through this fog, we must sequence information, format documents and eliminate wordiness, so our documents are easy for overwhelmed readers to absorb.