Information Overload Awareness Day is October 20th.
In conjunction with the observance of Information Overload Awareness Day, Basex, InboxDetox.com, the Information Overload Network, and the Information Overload Research Group have issued a joint challenge to knowledge workers everywhere: starting October 20th, send 10% fewer e-mail messages.
The average knowledge worker receives 93 e-mail messages per day and many are unnecessary. If every knowledge worker in the U.S. were to send 10% fewer messages, the cost of Information Overload would be reduced by as much as $180 billion per year.
Below are some simple recommendations on what knowledge workers can do starting October 20th (or earlier) to reduce the amount of Information Overload for us all.
To learn more about what can be done, attend the Information Overload Awareness Day online event on the Web on October 20th. The event features leading experts from a wide range of companies who will discuss the problem and offer solutions. Knowledge workers can attend for free by pledging not to multitask during the event (simply use “NoMultiTasking” as the code to attend).
Here’s what workers can do in the areas of e-mail and search:
1.) Send only those e-mails, IMs, and texts that have to be sent. This includes replies.
2.) Only use reply-to-all when absolutely necessary.
3.) Cut back on the number of recipients in the “to” and “cc” fields.
4.) Resist the urge to forward.
1.) Use more and better keywords to narrow your search.
2.) Use Boolean search arguments such as “not” and “near” to cut down on results.
Register now for the Information Overload Awareness Day Online Event at no charge (use code “NoMultiTasking”) and don’t forget to send fewer e-mails starting October 20th.