Here is a great post from another blog about a problem we all seem to face today.
A Fix for Information Overload
Remember the fax machine – a once glorious piece of technology that will likely start collecting dust in the corner of your office – and how it made business communications seem like magic in the 1980s … Imagine how much time you’d waste if you were checking that fax for new messages 50 times a day. Well, that’s exactly what the average worker does now with e-mail every single workday!As great as e-mail is, the technology can often impede efficiency. A 2007 study by research firm Basex reported that businesses waste $650 million a year because of so-called information pollution. Between e-mail addiction, spam and the time we spend interrupting our work to constantly check messages, information overload is hurting us. Throw cellphones, crack-berries, and instant messages into the mix and it’s clear we have a serious problem. The New York Times reports that some of the nation’s biggest tech firms, including Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Google, have formed a nonprofit to come up with a solution to this digital dilemma. Aptly called the Information Overload Research Group, it held its first conference on July 15. The group hopes to come up with major solutions to this problem soon.Google, probably the biggest enabler of this digital overload, is already doing its part. The company’s E-mail Addict lets users click on the “take a break” button, which turns the screen gray and displays the following: “Take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack. We’ll be back in 15 minutes!”So is Intel. The chip maker has a program called “Zero e-mail Fridays” which encourages workers to use face-to-face communications when possible.So what are other solutions? We also have a major information overload in the Project and Workforce management industry. Definitely more project management automation, less spreadsheets, real-time reports based on a central repository of project and workforce information can reduce the flood of emails and meeting we all experience today … until technology gets us even further away from the hole we are in right now.
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