Information Rage Coming Soon To an Office Near You

digitaldc submitted the latest excuse to get a few days off: "A survey released this week revealed the latest affliction to hit white-collar workers. It's called 'information rage,' and almost one in two employees is affected by it. Overwhelmed by the torrent of data flooding corporate workplaces, many are near the breaking point. The aftermath of all this is the deterioration in quality that occurs when flustered employees — unable to sort through a pile of information fast enough — end up submitting work that's substandard. Almost three quarters of the survey's respondents declared their work has suffered as a result."

Comments

Agree with Parent

[Tekfactory]

Some people suffer analysis paralysis, other suffer from the 'where do I start' problem and give up.

David Allen talks about this in Getting Things Done, and what most people have on their plates are lots of amorphous blobs of stuff, not actionable items. So the first step is to break up big blobs into little actions, then take the first action.

Another thing Allen says when most people say they don't have enough time, its not really time its how they use/don't use it that matters.

If you're willing to accept the above as true and act on that information, things will get better.

He's also got some ideas about meetings that are similar to what Randy Pausch said not in the last lecture, but his lecture on time management. Pausch didn't go to meetings if there wasn't an agenda prepared. Allen always asks for next steps 15 minutes before the meeting is over because if no one is taking action to fix the problem you'll have the same meeting over and over until someone does.

Re:Agree with Parent

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure I can anticipate David Allen's response to your post.

It is absolutely true that some people are assigned more work than is possible given the time they have. However, not everything needs to be done by YOU, right now, or even at all. The most urgent and most important actions need to come first. Other responsibilities need to be deferred to a later time, tracked on a list of "maybe someday I'll do it", delegated to someone else, or ditched entirely.

After all that, if you're managing your time well and still lagging, your very next project needs to become "Convince my manager or another higher power that my workload is unreasonable, and negotiate actions s/he needs to take to fix it."

Finally, if that fails, your next project needs to be "Find a new job". Because you'll never succeed at this one.

I highly recommend David Allen. His entire system is dedicated to helping maximize productivity, even under overwhelming workloads and tight deadlines. He seems to understand much better than other time gurus the expectations, information overload, overwork, and general nature of IT.

Re:Oh, it's Australia

[inigopete]

...except people in Australia rarely drink Foster's itself. It's vile. More usually VB or Tooheys, but it's a pretty regional-preference thing.

Call it what it is... spam

[rsborg]

I just tend to ignore people and channels of information that prove irrelevant or uninteresting.

In fact I end up "archiving" most of this information and only focus on discussion relating to important things or people at work.

Then again, in an poorly run organization where authority isn't clearly delineated or understood, people can often have too many "important people" (TPS reports anyone?). If that kind of situation isn't kept in check (either by the worker or the organization), it will lead to burnout and turnover.

Re:Paralysis by analysis

[smooth wombat]

next you just start doing stuff without considering any information just to see something actually happen.

That's SOP for our management. Just a series of random edicts without any understanding of what needs to be accomplished in the vain hope that if you throw enough of them together, something wonderful will happen.

Fix it with librarians!

[Sarten-X]

Too much information? Get a better tool to handle it.

Not in digital formats? Hire data-entry folks at minimum wage.

Can't find the information you want in the sea of other information? Hire a librarian!

Librarians don't just deal with books anymore. They're highly-trained specialists in the field of information organization and retrieval. Conveniently, thanks to budget cuts and changing usage, there are a LOT of librarians looking for jobs right now, and they'll take relatively-cheap salaries, too. Large companies can't afford not to have a librarian.

Substandard != RAGE

[davidwr]

RAGE is when you say to yourself "too hell with the consequences" and vent on someone.

Forgetting to change the backup tapes because you are overstressed is not rage.

Deliberately "forgetting" to change them may be.

Deliberately "forgetting" to change them and erasing or altering key files as a way of telling your boss "I hate you" almost certainty is.