Keys to Coping With Informati... Health Article

In-boxes are overflowing with magazines, reports and memos; e-mail boxes are brimming with half-read and unread messages.

"More and more managers tell me they're spending three or four hours a day responding to e-mail and doing so isn't making them more productive," says Lyle Sussman, Ph.D., a speaker, author, management consultant, and professor of management at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

"Staying abreast of developments in your field is more important than it has ever been," he says.

Yet even as demand for data skyrockets, the supply of information -- particularly that available on the Internet -- is outpacing demand. Anyone who works in an office or answers e-mail can experience information overload.

Instead of spending a large chunk of your workday sorting through irrelevant data and correspondence, Dr. Sussman recommends you become an intelligent consumer of information.

To send or not

Tell people what they should or shouldn't send you. It's so easy now for e-mail users to attach documents or to refer political messages to anyone in their networks. Be more assertive with your networks about what you want and don't want to receive.

"I've received messages from people in my network saying they would prefer I not send jokes I run across," says Dr. Sussman. "People are trying to set limits on the supply side."

Make the call

Ask people to use the telephone or to stop by in person. "Phone calls and face-to-face conversations are becoming lost arts," Dr. Sussman says. "I've been telling my professional colleagues that if it's something important, they should come down to my office and talk to me. I get a lot more information that way."

Focus on problem-solving

It's fine to search the Internet and scan magazine and newspaper articles, but you can physically control what lands in your in-box by not searching so much and then by searching only for what you need.

Find a gatekeeper

Develop closer contacts with trusted colleagues who can act as information agents. Who do you know who's knowledgeable in your field, whose opinion you value and who can point you toward relevant information?

"If everyone located two or three such friends who can act as gatekeepers, it's amazing how much time and frustration they could save themselves," says Dr. Sussman.

Try a screening agent

Use artificial-information agents, such as e-mail newsletters, that automatically feed your e-mail box with topical information.

"Services like these are why Reader's Digest will never go out of circulation," says Dr. Sussman. "They scan a wide variety of news sources and deliver to you only those items containing key words of your choice."

Use these agents selectively

Dr. Sussman has friends who rely on seven or more artificial agents. But rather than simplify their categorical use of information, all those agents make their jobs more complex, he says. Choose just one or two of these services -- the ones that consistently send you the highest quality, most relevant information -- and drop the others.

"Unlike the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, most of us aren't in a position to pay someone to screen our e-mail," says Dr. Sussman. "So we have to sort the wheat from the chaff ourselves. What makes it frustrating is that you never know what the wheat is and what the chaff is, because the world is changing so fast. We have to look at our information-search procedures in a much more pragmatic way -- they have to be driven by problem-solving."