Five Tips (and Some Tools) to Manage Information Overload

@tressalynne @SpinSucks Thanks for that retweet, Tressa. Really appreciate it.

I could really afford to work on #3 and #4 more. As for #5 Escape, I do get away to workout, play tennis, watch movies and have dinners with the family. My issue is that I come back!! I get all decompressed, and then pull out the mobile device while taking the dogs out, and I'm amp'd up again.

I need to do better - especially on weekends - of not checking mobile devices and social networks/blogs!

@glenn_ferrell thanks for the kind RT!

@ProfessorGary @ginidietrich @margieclayman Thanks for the retweet, Gary.

Very useful tips (especially #4.) I think we all suffer from information overload daily! ~KL

I am SO GUILTY of No. 4. SO GUILTY. 

On Evernote, I feel as if I should be using it, but I don't know how or why.

@seanmcginnis I swear to God, you sleep less than I do

@richmistkowski thanks for sharing!

These are great tips, I've never used Evernote but I'll have to check it out. Getting overwhelmed by information / data is not only bad for productivity but also bad for creativity / being a good human. 

I did start doing something different a couple of months ago. Part of my frustration with bookmarking is that it doesn't really explain the connections between things that I'm interested in. Even curation services like Peartrees don't quite address my need.

I tend to operate on a "this reminds me of that" scale and not so much "these two articles are both about politics." So I basically started dropping everything I like into spreadsheet form with cross references and then running data visualizations (scatter plot, bar graph, geographic locating, etc...) as a way to help me easily see how I got somewhere and what else was in / on the brain at that moment. Probably there's a more efficient way to do this than what I'm undertaking, but I suspect this will be where we go in the future (does anyone know of a start-up that does this? I would gladly pay money for something like it...)

@MargieClayman @ginidietrich Thanks Margie. xoxo

Excellent post, Allen! I've just started digging into BusyCal ... I need to explore it more. I'm trying to move from a paper to-do list to digital but it's proving difficult.

@jeanniecw @ginidietrich @SpinSucks Thanks for retweeting the post, Jeannie. :)

I seriously get overwhelmed by information overload - to the point where I sometimes shut down. Love these tips and tricks, especially for saving/managing posts and articles you want to get back to, instead of having 20 tabs open at a time (like I used to do! LOL) 

I am very interested in the Mailstrom tool and have just signed up for their beta. I am 9896 in line but hoping they work in 10,000 blocks at time ;) Thanks for the tip @allenmireles and @jasonkonopinski 

What I find extremely difficult is stop following other blogs and reading all those pdf files I download. So when emails and ebooks reach the roof and I'm on the floor I either press delete and unfollow some blogs or stop for a while until everything has found the right place.

Not the best policy for sure as at least for ebooks the best thing to do would be to scan them immediately and read them later, but who has the time to go back reading? And I can't print them all. And there are so many new things to know.

Well, I do my best and hope for the rest. :)

Good article and really interesting.

@MrTonyDowling Thanks Tony! Info overload a real challenge when there is so much amazing content happening every second of every day!

Sound advice! RT: “@MrTonyDowling: Five Tips (and Some Tools) to Manage Information Overload http://t.co/piyCVsV6qa via @ginidietrich”

Great article @allenmireles , dood to see you writing.

I love Mailstrom. I also think that dealing with all the social media, texts, phone calls and email influx is a critical issue that needs to be addressed according to how you work. For me, I can't have the Facebook toolbar installed, pushing information to me every second about what I'm missing that just happened.

I can't have regular Twitter open with the nudge that 2 new tweets are in the hashtag or 100 new tweets are in my main stream during the last second. 

Now, during the part of the day when I'm waiting for a meeting to start, waiting in line for lunch, waiting for... anything... that's when I insert social media. That way I'm in and out with the deadline already prepared for me. I'll have to place my lunch order, go to the meeting, start the teleconference.

For email, different system but similar.

 I know I work best in several hours uninterrupted by outside influences when I'm producing content of any kind. If it' doesn't involve video or audio, I'll even listen to Alpha and Theta waves while I work to the exclusion of everything else. This does Not work for everyone.

I've learned to recognize that some people need to have five minutes an hour of interaction. Others need to get up and take a walk at lunch. I need to exercise in the morning and look at trees or a body of water at some point.

Know thyself. 

Drop box is great and it's become my place to dump stuff I want to deal with in the evening, oh and Evernote is great for that too ;) Not checking email first thing in the morning usually saves me, because morning is my time to focus. I'm worthless after 2:00 pm.

I love Jason's terminology: Digital Hoarder ... is that a good thing or a disorder? ;)

Me too. Hoarders and Intervention. LOL

I tend to shut down my social networks and avoid reading anything. I play mindless games like solitaire or watch mindless television (hello Kardashian's!!)

I have huge success with scheduling work time....it is such a simple thing and really works well for me.