As service professionals, information is key to our success. Researching, distilling, analysing and reporting all form a critical element of our roles. Do you sometimes feel though like you’re drowning, being inundated and bombarded, with a strong urge to put your fingers in your ears and go “la la la la – GO AWAY!”?
This might be surprising to you, but information overload is not a new concept. In 1440 the invention of the Gutenberg press created an outcry of information protestors. “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” asked humanist and scholar Erasmus.
What has changed is the growth in technology available to deliver information to us instantly and the pace of change.
This image is of the first IBM computer in1956 which had a 5 megabyte hard drive. Today, the weakest iPhone has a 16 gigabyte drive, about 3,200-times as big. The IBM hard drive could have stored exactly one iPhone picture. But whilst our computers of today are able to manage enormous amounts of complex data, our brains have not developed pro rata.
According to information theory, each and every moment of the day our unconscious minds are exposed to 11 million bits of information, but we can only process around 40. If we had to process everything we were exposed to we’d go mad, literally!
The flood of digital information is changing not only our habits, but our mental capacities: Short on time we are being forced to scan and skim to keep up, impacting our ability to maintain focus and attention, to reflect deeply, or even to remember what we’ve learned. This has been validated by research from Microsoft that we now have an attention span of 8 seconds, 1 second less than a Goldfish!
So if we can’t change the volume of information heading our way, and we know how it’s impacting our stress levels, what are some strategies that we can put into place that we DO have control over? How can we develop productivity habits that give us back some time and, more importantly, our sanity?
This will be the essence of my presentation at the Professional Services Marketing Conference on 18th August. We will look at how the brain creates habit and what critical elements of a habit to focus on in order to change unwanted habits for effective ones.
In the meantime, I’d like to share 3 golden rules that, if we proactively work on them, mean that we can reduce the cognitive overload and levels of stress that our brains are experiencing.
- Step away from the email! When you arrive at your desk first thing in the morning, the last thing to do is open your laptop and start working on email. When we do this we are helping everyone else to create their day and achieve their objectives rather than focusing on our own productivity. Our brains are usually at their freshest in the morning so we are far better to use this time for complex work than email management.
- Schedule breaks. Our brains need oxygen, glucose and water to operate and sitting at a desk for hours on end drains our brains and makes it extremely hard to focus and maintain attention. At the conference I will be sharing with you the secret of ultradian rhythms but in the meantime, make sure you take non work-related breaks every 90 minutes or so.
- Get quality sleep. Our brains are at their most active when we are sleeping. They sort memories, embed learning and get rid of toxins and if we are waking up in the night or getting poor quality sleep these processes are inhibited. Leave all digital devices outside of the bedroom and create a nightly sleep routine.
It’s time to move from distraction and procrastination to focus and action!
Clare Edwards, BrainSmart Consulting – speaking on “Change your brain for Habits of Excellence”