Slashdot Mirror
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."
Paralysis by analysis is what we always called it. You can't get anything done because you have to large amount of information about every decision available to decide and even if you can you want to wait for more data in hopes making a better decision. Eventfully you just end up feeling impotent because nothing is happening; next you just start doing stuff without considering any information just to see something actually happen.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You're not crazy at all.
Email is abused and not used correctly for its purpose. Most projects I have worked on in the last couple of years use planning software and web interfaces to collaborate. This way, the project is broken down into manageable sections and assigned to very specific groups. All of the documentation and materials is posted to these sections and anybody can view the modifications and add or edit them. Notes, comments, etc. can be added to action items and we can see at a glance the status of any specific task.
Email cannot do this. You end up with a clusterfuck of email messages from people that can be unrelated to your specific task and multiple versions of documentation that you need to track down in 200 attachments. You need to communicate with that one vendor? Search through 5,000 emails to find his email address instead of looking through a contact list in the project management software. Email just does not make sense.
I don't experience this anymore. People that are not used to it and start the email overload with me usually get handled pretty quickly and are admonished that email is not an acceptable form of professional communication for our projects. Even the management gets onboard pretty quick because they like it more than email too. Probably something about people responding directly to their task or trouble ticket with timestamps and notes.