Information overload has apparently grown from a water-cooler complaint to a full-blown productivity crisis.
At least that’s what the creators of Information Overload Awareness Day (Oct. 20) want you to believe. And who’s to say they’re wrong? According to the e-mail I received -- ironically to promote a book about reducing e-mail -- the following statistics build the case:
- 58 percent of U.S. government and education workers spend almost half their workday filing, deleting or sorting paper or digital information.
- 72 percent of Americans check e-mails in bed, on sick days and during vacations.
- The U.S. economy loses $900 billion annually due to lowered productivity caused by information overload.
It’s funny. On the one hand, I want to mock the press agent for adding to my overload by sending the release. But in truth, I am already swimming in information that shouts alarmingly for attention every day.
I don’t request this information, and that creates much of the problem for me. When people I don’t know answer questions I haven’t asked, my deep-thinking process gets short-circuited in favor of sorting the new information. It’s like forgoing REM sleep in favor of perpetually straightening the bedsheets. It’s part of the total go-to-sleep process, but not the part I need the most.
It’s not necessary to be employed to experience this situation. The process of conducting a job search these days is a minefield of conflicting news reports, illogical statistics and unrewarding data dumps, all delivered directly to one’s computer in hourly e-mail batches.
By my estimate, the average job seeker receives most or all of these e-mails on a daily or weekly basis:
- Postings from corporate, government or for-profit job boards for positions that (sort of) match pre-selected criteria
- Newsletters and meeting announcements from job clubs and career programs
- News articles relating to unemployment or other pre-selected topics
- Industry or professional association articles and updates
- Catalogs and course information from professional training programs
- Alerts from social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook
- Updates from networking contacts and fellow job seekers
- Actual correspondence from potential employers, including the ubiquitous rejection letters
Have I missed anything? Of course I have, but there’s no point in figuring out what. The problem is obvious: With this much information coming at them every day, job seekers need extraordinary organizational skills just to stay even with the reading load. Which is fine except for this: Reading about job search is quite a bit different from actually doing it; not surprisingly, it’s also less productive. The more time one spends handling information, the less time and energy one has for the actual tasks of job search.
Which are? Once you’ve identified your career path and the companies you might work for, job search boils down to one key step: Talking to people. Not e-mailing them, mind you, but talking to them. Whether this takes place as networking, informational interviewing, cold calling or interviewing, it will always turn out that real-time conversations carry more weight and produce more results than any electronic or paperwork process.
And while absorbing new information can be a critical part of the process, particularly at the beginning of a search, it doesn’t take long to reach the point of diminishing returns. How many articles on resume writing do you really need to read? If you’ve written your resume and like it, you can stop reading about them. I promise: There won’t be a quiz later.
If information overload is an issue for you, try one or more of the following tips. If it isn’t your issue, stop reading now: You don’t need any more information on this topic.
- Use your software to sort incoming e-mails into folders before you read them. Then set aside specific times to scan those items before deleting or downloading them.
- Start each day by identifying your job search steps. Then conduct those steps before you even open your e-mail box. This allows you to finish the day's work before more comes flying in.
- Whenever possible, call instead of e-mailing. You will connect more quickly and deeply with the other person, leading to better job search results.
- Streamline the e-mails you send, particularly for networking, to be quick and friendly. Consider that if you can't get to the point in a few sentences, you may not have a point. Shut down the computer and return when you do.
- Keep things simple. Remember that your goal is to find a job. If you receive information that doesn't further that cause, let it go.
Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com or at 626 Armstrong Ave., St. Paul, MN 55102.
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