information overload or addiction ?

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 either so here are 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.

How we get anything done is a miracle.

Before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Can you 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?

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 either so here are 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.

How we get anything done is a miracle.

Before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Can you 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?