Information overload, burnout, emotional fatigue, ego depletion, analysis paralysis, digital distraction, and decision fatigue are all buzzwords that continually come to describe the ever-prevalent way in which we are transformed by our professional and personal obligations and the desire to remain in-touch with the world around us.

As an information management professional, it is my job to help my clients and myself stay abreast of new developments in the field, a job that can quickly lead to information overload and burnout. Learning to define information overload and recognizing when it happens is key to avoiding negative cognitive strain.

Simply put, information overload occurs when the amount of data to process into usable information becomes greater than the ability of the system’s processing capacity.^[1] Or as 1940’s Nobel Prize economist and psychologist, Herbert Simon, once said:

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”^[2]

TMI. From your friends and family sharing too much information about their personal drama, to an overfilled email inbox, to the ever-increasing page count of the daily news, to the steady stream of recondite language in contracts, statutes, and regulations – we are bombarded with more and more data daily which causes strain on our mental processing capacity. Far from information enriching our lives, it becomes a burden which we must carefully navigate for optimal efficacy. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.

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I will share my three step approach to addressing information overload in my next post.

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^[1] James T. Miford & Raymond P. Perry, A Methodological Study of Overload, 97 Journal of General Psychology 131, 131 (1977)

^[2] ‘Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World’ in Martin Greenberger (ed.) Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest (1971)