Article Title: Dealing with Information Overload Author: Stephan Szugat Word Count: 828 Article URL: http://www.abenetis.com/encyclopedia.html Format: 65 Characters per Line ------------------ ARTICLE START ------------------
Dealing with Information Overload Today
sources of information seem to be endless. Magazines, journals, memos, emails, web sites and a lot more, provide us with more data than any person is able to handle. Furthermore, information presented to us while taking part at meetings and other events will join already obtained information from above mentioned sources. Information overload is a very real concern for today's business people, but also for all others.
We must possess skills that allow us to process huge amounts of data. Consider following method as one option to bring your information flow under your control.
1. Have a structure for information you like to store. Without a structure you will lose overview about which information is stored where. A good solution for beginning is a structure of your own knowledge and information requirements. For example: Make some folders or directories on your computer. One directory or folder for one knowledge area, such as languages, computer knowledge, knowledge from your working experiences.
You could use your computer to store things you receive by email or internet searches. To store offline items just follow same tactic. You might create one or more folders as you need to keep your structure work. What ever you do, keep your structure topic oriented. Open only new topics when you have many items for new ones. It works fine if you have a folder where you store things first for which you don't have a folder yet. Just call that folder 'Collected Items without Category' or something similar.
2. Scan Articles before reading. When you encounter information of interest, read first paragraph or two, scan body for keywords and read conclusion. Then decide if you want to keep article for future "in depth" reading. Store articles in a folder or directory which states that you like to read this article in full length. Furthermore you could have collecting folders where you put all information, which you couldn't allocate to a specific area of knowledge. Learning to "preview" information before deciding to spend valuable time on it will save you many hours. Time to spend on things that matter most.
2. Managing Emails Today it's easy to receive 200 or more emails each day. It's often difficult to determine which are important and which are not. To save time sorting emails, simply filter important emails into separate folders. Then once a day look at rest. Use your email programs filtering capabilities to accomplish this. Just setup some rules to sort received emails into some folders.
