Confess your symptoms of information overload

SARAH PHILLIPS Sep 25 2009 07:13

Paul Hemp has written an essay outlining his concern over the unsettling side effects of our 24 hour, 21st century lives, and specifically the amount of information, emails and facts we are bombarded with.

He writes:"The flood of information that swamps me daily seems to produce more pain than gain. And it's not just the incoming tidal wave of email messages and RSS feeds that causes me grief. It's also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up in my job."

In case you got sidetracked and didn't get a chance to read the rest, here's the cold hard facts:

A study found that once workers were interrupted by an email it took on average 24 minutes to return to the suspended task.
2 300 employees judged nearly one third of the emails they receive to be unnecessary, but spend two hours a day processing them.
Research reported that the IQ scores of people distracted by email and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points -- twice the decline recorded for those smoking marijuana.

To be honest I had to go and sit in a dark corner without the ring of a phone in earshot or flash of a computer screen in sight in order to concentrate for long enough to bring you this blogpost, and even then it was tough. How we get anything done is a miracle.

But before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Perhaps you are raising a BlackBerry orphan, or can't remember the last time you finished reading a novel.

Hemp recommends limiting emails to five sentences, or setting virtual break times to force yourself to step away from the desk, as possible remedies. But how do you stop yourself from completely drowning now the information floodgates are well and truly open? I'm off to declare email bankruptcy ... - guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009

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