Grayling Blog

Managing this information flood is one of the biggest challenges organziations and each of us has to face. Actually we are spending a lot of time in writing, answering and storing e-mails. Experts say it takes up to four minutes to refocus on work after checking e-mail. Jonathan B. Spira, CEO and Chief analyst at Basex, a knowledge economy research and advisory firm, highlighted that it endangers productivity more than surfing the web. Basex organised an Information Overload Awareness Day in August 2009.

Some offices have already introduced days without e-mail communication. About six years ago the idea of a day without e-mail first emerged in England, when confectionary company Nestle announced a Friday e-mail ban. Two years ago the US company Intel introduced the “Zero E-mail Friday” to encourge more face to face communication. The initiative was less sucessful: 70 percent of the technicians and more than 50 percent of the managers still read their incoming e-mails immediately.

The pace of content creation has increased extremely and e-mail is not the only “timekiller”. With Facebook, Twitter and youTube we are talking about “social information overload” next.

There are some simple – but often not always easy to realise – tips, like finish your actual work before opening the incoming e-mail or taking time to respond in daily business life. Jonathan B. Spira made up this list to survive in an information age: Managing information overload.