Information Overload - A Growing Concern

This post is excerpted from the Big Hit Bits E-zine

Perhaps your first notion was to delete this email because you have fifty others piled in your inbox including newsletters you wish you could get to. We live in an era of TMI - too much information! It sure seems that way when we're bombarded with dozens or hundreds of business improvement ideas daily - many of them are excellent.

HUGE QUESTION: How do you know which messages to pay attention to and which to ignore?

Another HUGE QUESTION: How do I budget time to leverage Social Media opportunities without hampering my other effective development efforts?

You don't want to miss out on the good stuff and there's a lot of it out there. You also don't want to waste time on titillating but irrelevant news and ideas.

The way I would start answering the two BIG questions is use common sense and focus first on what you already know. Then build out your knowledge base. Let me explain with some key points.

• You're an expert too. You have unique, valuable ideas to contribute to your industry. Start sharing your ideas through your own blog, other blogs, an e-newsletter and Social Network groups.
• Look at headlines and decide what you want to study further. Quickly dispatch the irrelevant "noise."
• When you begin reading something, let your goals be the referee of whether to continue. Ask, "Can this information contribute to my success?
• Make time to thoroughly read what you decide is relevant and interesting.
• Take action immediately on new techniques you learn. For example, you learn a new conversation starter - use it at your next networking event and watch what happens.
• Keep a highly visible file of new ideas, philosophies and approaches you find interesting and further study the ones that emerge as most relevant to your goals.
• Always ask: "Am I being entertained or educated? Entertaining education is a bonus!
• Tune out local and national news, especially during your productive hours!
• Pay attention to your industry and profession news.
• Read more about timeless principles that will build your effectiveness.
• Use Linked in for your professional development networking.Linkedin
• Use Facebook for your social and collegial network growth.
• Use Twitter to offer ideas and personal updates and to follow your mentors.
• Understand that you are now a member of the media too. Think long and hard about that one.

My personal experience with information overload instructs me that to effectively deal with myriad new messages, I need only apply the principles of common sense. In this case it's relevance to my goals.

You probably already know how to handle the various challenges of life. Information overload is no different. Relevance to your goals is the fundamental starting point and that's a simple idea worth paying attention to.