This document provides tips for avoiding information overload. It discusses the problems with too many emails and suggests deleting spam, saving important emails in folders, and emptying your inbox daily. It also recommends scheduling specific times for checking email and calls to maintain a work-life balance. Other tips include being comfortable with silence, debriefing after meetings, scheduling time for tasks and relaxation, accepting mistakes, and taking risks. Resources for further reading on information overload and time management are also listed.

1. How to avoid
information overload
Leanne Rizzo
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/7537238368/sizes/n/

2. “There are many things of which a wise
man might wish to be ignorant”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/8197953256/sizes/n/

3. The quest for
elegance
Quest for elegance
Less can be MORE
Empty space is OK!

4. Maintain a work/life balance
Spirals
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/mlehet/51389051/

5. “…a bulging [email] in-box demoralizes
users with feelings of overload”
(Hurst, 2007,p. 25)
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/slipstreamblue/2638690797/sizes/n/

6. Practical Tips on Managing
your Email In-box
• Delete all spam
• Save FYI emails or action items in
appropriate digital folder
• Finish 2 minute tasks immediately
• Have a to do list for items that will take longer
than 2 minutes
• Empty out entire email inbox every day
• “Induction” process may be needed

7. Hurst’s definition of the email
Inductionprocess:
“induction” definition
The massive cleaning out of several emails that have piled up
over a specific amount of time and therefore make your
in-box a total count of 0.
Hurst suggests that your inbox is a mere temporary holding place for communication and
it’s not meant to live there.

8. Schedule certain times of day to check emails or return phone calls
Time management
Time Management Tips
Schedule certain times of day to check emails and return phone calls
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/22280677@N07/3910685

9. Be comfortable with silence
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/66119192@N03/6022322818/sizes/m/
Be comfortable with silence

10. Debrief after meetings
• “Ask yourselves, ‘Did we accomplish
everything we set out to do? Is everyone
clear on the next steps?’ “ (Levine, 2006,
p.113)
• Schedule follow-up tasks that need to be
completed
• Stay in touch with the front lines. “Find some
way to ‘meet’ with your customers and ask
them about them about their needs” (Levine,
2006, p. 117).

11. Dance
Schedule time
not just for working,
but for playing…
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/camargofernanda/8077035604/

12. Mistakes
Be OK with mistakes
Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new.
~ Albert Einstein

13. Jump on 2- risk taking
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk/486119799/sizes/s/
Being willing to take risks

14. “People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been
taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.
If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

15. Other Resources:
Resources
1) Blur: How to Know What’s True in the
Age of Information Overload
by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
2) Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of
Information and E-mail Overload
by Mark Hurst
3) The Dip
by Seth Godin
4) Cut to the Chase: And 99 Other Rules to
Liberate Yourself and Gain Back the Gift
of Time
by Stuart R. Levine
5) The overflowing brain : information
overload and the limits of working
memory
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/cherigrace/7478349084/sizes/m/ by Torkel Klingberg

16. Balance is the perfect state of still water.
Let that be your model.
Remembering balance
It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.
-Confucius
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ladymaggic/4594513247/sizes/m/

17. References
References
ba1969. (Photographer). (2012). Canvas texture 1, 2, 4, & 5. [Web Photo]. Retrieved from
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=search&txt=texture&w=1&x=0&y=0
Hurst, M. (2007). Bit literacy: Productivity in the age of information and e-mail overload. New York: Good Experience
Press.
Levine, S. (2006). Cut to the chase: And 99 other rules to liberate yourself and gain back the gift of time. (pp. 113-117).
New York: Doubleday.