Information Overload Essay

development Overload Essay tuition Overload is an increasing problem two in the workplace and in life in gen sequencel. It is a state in which the bill of in stock(predicate) cultivation is so overwhelming a soulfulness is unable to in effect process and utilize it.Information overload is intuitively noticeable in our daily lives. Walking any street, we can hardly esteem the fare of training we are exposed to. Information hits us from all directions, newspapers, television, voice mail, cellular phones, e-mail, electronic memos, and the World Wide Web, to name a few. This increase in data, combined with the factor of change in many aspects of our lives, can lead to an unhealthy effect.Information Overload is when you are trying to deal with more breeding than you are able to process to ca-ca sensible decisions. The result is either that you either mark devising decisions, or that you make the wrong decisions.Understanding Information overloadThe first recorded utilise of the phrase information overload was economic consumptiond by the futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970, when he predicted that the rapidly increasing amounts of information being produced would eventually cause people problems. Heylighen (1999) noted, People exposed to the rapid changes of modern life whitethorn develop a state of help littleness and inadequacy.Nelson (2001) defines information overload as the incapability to obtain a form of knowledge from a massive amount of information for one reason or an new(prenominal). Information overload can take place for one of these reasons1. Not understanding the existing information2. sense of smell inundated by the claim to absorb huge amounts of information3. Not knowing if the needed information exists or not4. Not knowing where to obtain the information5. Knowing where the information is but hit no access privilegeCauses of Information overloadInformation overload was experienced long in the beginning the appearance of informa tion engineering and electronic gad sounds. Complaints about too many books echo across the centuries, from when books were paper rush rolls, parchment manuscripts, or hand printed. After Printing innovation books were produced and accumulated in unprecedented numbers, and, attached their drop in be, many more readers than before had access to more books than they could read.In the Internet era where millions of smart phones and gadgets are sold every day, zillions of tons of selective information are being produced. Thus making people spoilt for choices. With a touch, one can easily get almost any data from any corner of the world. The rate of production of different kinds of data such(prenominal) as news, text, mul judgment of convictiondia and graphs is breathtaking. For fount YouTube where 24 hours of video is being uploaded in every minute and the rate is increasing everyday. There are millions of sites are there and even the IP address is going to be exhausted. One could i magine the amount of electronic data that is available to digest.Organizations accumulate a huge amount of information about its intimate operations and resources. Fifteen years ago scarcely phone, fax and post mails were used for converse. There is a general increase in business communication by voice mail, e-mail, internet and online conferencing in gain to the above mentioned traditional methods which results information overload.Disadvantages of information overload for an organizationToo little or too much information is not good for an individual and an organization. Too much reduces their ability to concentrate effectively on the most consequential messages. People facing information overload sometimes try to have sex by ignoring some of the messages, by delaying responses to messages they deem unimportant, by answering only parts of some messages, by responding inaccurately to certain messages, by taking less time with each message, or by reacting only superficially t o all messages.Persons exposed to excessive amounts of information are less productive, prone to make brusk decisions, and risk suffering serious stress-related diseases. He becomes highly selective and ignore a large amount of information or give up and dont go beyond the first results in many cases, need more time to reach a decision, make mistakes, have effortfulies in identifying the relationship between the expand and the overall perspective and waste time.Information overload affects-and afflicts-both individual knowledge workers, fight to perform their jobs darn drowning in data, and entire office organizations, whose productivity and customer care suffer as a consequence.The teemingness of information we enjoy today comes at a price. Less apparent is the tremendous hidden cost it imposes on the organization as a whole. In one study, for mannikin, people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to re gaming to a work labour after an email dislocation. Another study compris e that time mixed-up to handling unnecessary e-mail and recovering from information interruptions cost Intel nearly $1 billion a year. An article in the October issue of HBR, found that forcing knowledge workers to take weekly breaks from email and other work distractions improved performance. Information Overload on an organization is to understand all the lost opportunities it causes and inefficiencies produced.The amount of information has increased for a number of reasons there is a general increase in business communication, in-company and with customers and suppliers trends such as globalisation and deregulation increase competition companies are downsizing and few secretaries are employed to protect people from information more outsourcing means a wider range of other companies with which it is necessary to communicate. There are also more ways to communicate by fax, voice mail, e-mail, internet and online conferencing, in addition to the more traditional methods, telephone , meetings, post and telex.The cost to businessTime is wasted. People make it too much time look for information. 38% of managers surveyed waste substantial amounts of time just looking for information. Factors such as the holding of files in different software formats and the speed of the internet at censorious times of day contribute to this. Decisions are often delayed 43% of respondents though that decisions were delayed and differently adversely affected by analysis paralysis or the existence of too much information. 47% of respondents said that information collection distracts them from their main responsibilities. They find it difficult to develop strategies for dealing with the information they retrieve. It is interest to imagine the potential increase in productivity if all distractions were removed.The human costsThe study place for the first time that information overload contributes to stress. Two out of three respondents associated information overload with tautne ss with colleagues and loss of job satisfaction. 42% attributed ill-health to this stress. 61% said that they have to cancel social activities as a result of information overload and 60% that they are ofttimes too tired for leisure activities. subject area differencesIn general these were not considered to be of great significance. Managers in the USA and the United Kingdom get the most unsolicited information. Asian managers appear to need less information to make decisions only 9% claimed to need enormous amounts of information compared with 31% in the United States. Their major decisions may be do through intuition to a greater extent. More United States managers (39%) agree that they suffer stress than those in the UK and Hong Kong. People can no longer develop effective personal strategies for managing information.Faced with an onslaught of information and information channels, they have become unable to develop simple routines for managing information. Technologies for managi ng information are often the problem, not the solution. They can create the M25 effect more lanes just means more traffic. People create and administrate because they can, not because its useful. Intranets can become like the internet full of home-made home pages and dead links. Intelligent agents frequently do not live up to their name.Current research suggests that the surging volume of available information-and its interruption of peoples work-can adversely affect not only personal well-being but also decision making, innovation, and productivity. In one study, for example, people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to return to a work task after an e-mail interruption. Thats bad news for both individuals and their organizations.Theres hope, though. Innovative tools and techniques promise relief for those of us struggling with information inundation. Some are technological solutions-software that automatically sorts and prioritizes incoming e-mail, for instance-designed to reg ulate or divert the deluge. Others impede people from drowning by getting them to change the way they behave and think. Who knows Maybe someday even I volition enjoy swimming in the powerful currents of information that now threaten to pull me under. in front we can take action / set the affair to minimize the negative effect of information overload, we should do the analysis of information flows both individual and organisation. Not only for electronic information source such email, but also for spoken words, reading books and talking to friends and family. The analysis is started with identification what information we need found on our key information areas, when we need the information, to whom we should exchange the information with (information sharing), and why we need the information and how we turn the information into results.After understand the information flow, we will be able to set/construct the procedure of information handling which consists of filtering, inform ation pruning, time management, to-do numerate and optimization the use of current technology as information organizing and distributing tool. There are two types of filtering information i.e. technical filter and daily communication filter. The technical filter is easier to manage as once we set our preference it will work accordingly. An example of technical filter is filter function that is available in e-mails. Filtering daily communication is more difficult because it depends much on the situation and current conversation at that time. Every reaction to another person is an indication of what you want to hear or not hear during the rest of the conversation. We often think that the information is important/useful for the recipient which actually not from recipient point of view. Filter prime our thought and test whether the new information is important. However, the filter should not be too rigid, as it may pull out coincidences. We will no longer accidentally stumble across information, as is often part of searches on the internet.As regards of second information flow, we can decide more quickly to simply stop receiving it if the information is just nice to know instead of need to know. We will not miss anything as we dont use this information for making decision. Besides that, this less important information will leave us less time for really important information. There is a tool for technical pruning such as setting up the expiry date and which action should we take e.g. file, cancel, delete, etc.Time management is important as time is always in exceedingly short supply. We never enough with the time that we have. Therefore, financial aid and concentration are important aspect in time management. With full attention and concentration the time spent for managing information is more efficient.Because we need to remember increasingly more, we need an aid i.e. to do list of actions so that we can keep tracking what things we still need to do/settle. Th is practice alone will give us a lot of added value. Besides the to-do list, it is also good if we also make not-to-list so that when the time come, we are ready.Nowadays with high technology we can optimize the IT to help us to organize and distribute the information.