Overload leads to Waste

Here are various proclamations about wasted time, resources, and days; sad if even half true!

* Americans waste 9 million hours per day searching for misplaced items.
* The average adult spends 16 hours a year searching for lost keys.
* 80% of the items we file, we never look at again
* The average person spends 8 months of their life reading junk mail.
* 90 million trees are consumed each year to provide paper for junk mail.

Letting Go of Excess

Consider your information intake vehicles and determine how you can pare down. On basic level, I suggest opening your mail over the waste basket; it's much easier to throw things
out with the waste basket below you.

If you receive a magazine or journal, go through it rapidly and take out the articles or items that look like they'll be of interest. Recycle the rest of the publication. Often, there's no need to hang on to the back issues of a publication. Much of the information is also on-line. In general pare down what you receive to only what you need -- reduce the volume as quickly and easily as possible.

Manage Info with Tickler Files

If you're overwhelmed by what crosses your desk, it's worth considering the benefits of having a file folder for each month of the year and a file folder for each day of the month. This idea, the "tickler file," sytem has been in practice for years.

Create a file for days 1-31 of the month, and place it at the front of one of your file drawers. Behind that, have a file for each month of the year. If it's the second day of the month, for example, but you receive something that you won't need to deal with until the 15th, then put it in the file for, say, the 13th to allow yourself some slack. If anything comes in that you don't need to handle now, put it in your tickler file. This yields some immediate benefits. It keeps your desk clear and eliminates a lot of worry about where things go.

As the days and months go by, you continually take files that were in front and put them in the back. Once you get this system in place, you'll find that many of the things you file may not need to be acted on later. The benefits of this system are immediate.

Are Lists a Trap?

Lists of information management tips can leave me cold. The notion that merely following some set of guidelines without understanding the magnitude of the situation relegates any such list, however important, to the status of a temporary fix that will soon lose potency.

Understanding the "why" has an impact for those who are willing to make significant and lasting headway on the issue. It's no different than the U.S. response to fundamental Islamic terrorism; you have to get to the root of the issue before Al Qaeda and such groups can ever be quashed. Otherwise, you're continually attempting to put out brush fires as they appear. Consequently, there is no enduring list of "ten all-purpose ways" to fight terrorism.

With information management, or time management, for that matter, however satisfying such lists may be, ultimately they fall by the wayside. As a case in point, virtually every career professional has read at least one time management book and many articles, and all have encountered time management tips in list form. Yet virtually everyone remains continually
pressed for time. So, is the solution to retrieve one's list and apply it more diligently? Or would a more sound approach be to understand the pervasive nature of time pressure in our society, to take a big picture look at one's life and career, and begin to creatively address situations? I would opt for the latter every time!

Still, we all like lists. Realistically, though, in five to seven days, most people will not even be able to *find* whatever list you give them, however valuable they regarded it at one time. It is far better to strive to attain understanding of the issue than it is to add yet another list to the one's personal "collection." The best of both worlds might be to strive for understanding, then apply some guidelines from a list.

Those who insist on a list (really a magic wand) in a few weeks hence will be right back doing exactly what they've been doing, whereas those who tried to gain understanding will have the potential to achieve professional and personal breakthroughs!

When Information is Useless

Information yields all types of trend data, be it the rise of IPhone use, or the popularity of twitter. What we never get is how these trends add: where things are going. When everything hits you from the left and right with no discernable pattern and no unifying theme, our lives seem hectic, change seems unmanageable, and few people have a clue as to how to prudently proceed in their lives.

Skepticism is a Virtue

Michael Gartner, journalist, lawyer, and former head of NBC News suggests asking yourself the following ten questions as you read, watch, and surf:

1. Is the guest expert being paid?

2. Who posted the information? Unless this is clear, it's useless.

3. Who stated the information? Anonymous quotes don't count.

4. What was the question? In any poll, stop reading or listening if the reporter doesn't give the wording of the question, the sample size, and the date of the poll.

5. What is the answer? If an allegation is made in a story, is the reply included in the story as well? If not, it's one-sided.

6. Why should I believe you? Any opinion piece is simply that, an opinion unless the writer has incontestable facts.

7. How can I believe you? If the reporter's on a talk show, touting partisan politics, how can he/she be writing a column next week that supposed to be straight news?

8. Does anyone believe this? Absolutely ignore person-on-the-street interviews or focus group stories that purport to speak for the state or for the nation.

9. Are the words loaded? I "say," you, "allege." My friends are "associates," yours are cronies," etc.

10. Do I really care? Because the headline is large doesn't mean the issue is important.

Source: Michael Gartner

Conquer Your Filing Cabinets

Studies show that 80% of the items in a typical file cabinet are never used again! That means you could pare down at least 50 percent of what you're retaining. You don't even need to go that far, however; try to pare down 20 percent.

Why do you need to pare down? In a society that throws information at us at an ever-increasing rate, it's a given that more is coming. Condition your mind that this is so.

It's All a Blur

Do you remember what year these major events occurred?

* Active American military involvement in Vietnam ended?
* The U.S.A. first put a man on the moon?
* The Three Mile Island mishap occurred?

Active American military involvement in Vietnam ended in 1975.
The U.S.A. first put a man on the moon in 1969.
The Three Mile Island mishap occurred in 1979.

As I explain in Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society, not knowing these dates doesn't mean you're not educated. Actually, it's the opposite. In a sense, you're over-educated. You know more about current affairs than most people of any previous generation. To keep events in context, you have to:

* Recognize that you can't keep up with everything. Be more conscious of where you'll offer your time and attention.

* Look for broad-based patterns to the information you receive, rather than attempt to pay attention to all manner of detail.

* Don't beat yourself up psychologically for not keeping up with every little thing. No one can, and unless you're employed by the media, there is no prize for trying.

Absorb and Apply

Information can only become knowledge when it's applied. Before you can absorb and apply yesterday's intake, however, the explosion of new information floods your receptive capacity.
Such constant exposure to the daily information and media shower leaves each of us incapable of ingesting, synthesizing, or applying the data before tomorrow's shower.

The eruption of information renders us over-stimulated. The more information you try to ingest, the faster the "clock races," and your sense of breathing space is strained.

As yet, few people are wise information consumers. Curiously, there is only one party who controls the volume, rate, and frequency of information that you're exposed to. That person is you. The notion of "keeping up" is illusory, self-defeating, frustrating and harmful. The sooner you give it up the better you'll feel.

Scientific Info for 460 Years

"As we go from grade school to high school we learn only a billionth of what there is to learn. There is enough scientific information written every day to fill seven complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica; there is enough scientific information written every year to keep a person busy reading day and night for 460 years!" Source B. L. Siegel, Vital Speeches of the Day, 4/15/84!!

What Info they ARE taking in?

Makes you wonder what information they are taking in:

American's Understanding of Science: From the National Science Foundation's biennial report issued on April 30, 2002 on the state of science understanding, research, and education, of 1,574 adults surveyed:

* 60% agreed or strongly agreed that some people possess psychic powers or extrasensory perception, a premise yet unproven.

* 30% believe that some reported objects are vehicles from other civilizations.

* 43% read the astrology charts at least occasionally in the newspaper.

Also:

* 54% knew long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. (One year.)

* 45% knew that lasers work by focusing light.

* 51% knew that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses.

* 48% knew that the earliest humans didn't live at the same time as the dinosaurs.