Houston, we have a problem

Have you ever stopped to think how our information overload looks to a new college graduate?

We all know that Information Overload is a problem; the staggering impact on the enterprise and the economy – about a Trillion dollars a year in the US alone – has been well documented. We know that knowledge workers in our corporations are in a state of constant distraction and stress; and some of us – myself included – are doing what we can to help them cope.

But what of the inflow of new employees, those bright young New College Graduates? They come in from an academic environment where they seldom use email these days, and where they pretty much control their social media intake at will; and then – Wham! – email overload hits them in the face. Mercifully, when they join they’re junior enough not to be at the top of the overload pyramid; but they’ll get into the 100-messages-a-day range soon enough, lacking any of the existing coping skills that we taught their predecessors.

We hire them, we throw them in the water – as an Intel veteran I’m actually OK with that approach – but then we ignore the fact that the water is too turbulent to swim in. Not smart!

What are colleges for?!

So I ask you, where should these new recruits get taught how to cope with Information Overload? Think of it: where do they learn math, or chemistry, or finance, or whatever they will need to do a good job once they land one? In college or university, that’s where. So why aren’t they being taught email overload management techniques there, too?

This may sound sacrilegious… how can screening your Inbox compete with Quantum Mechanics? But in fact the IO problem has such a major impact on their future performance and quality of life that the students would really benefit; nor does it require much time – a half-day session may make a world of difference, by making people realize what’s going on and what they may do about it. Of course, a longer course that would also address the underlying skills of handling information and turning it into knowledge would be even more useful.

Another objection may be that students don’t yet experience the problem enough to care. Admittedly they may not have much email-based overload, but we know that IO in general is making itself felt among them. Prof. David Levy of the University of Washington (whose insightful lecture on the disappearance of thinking time in academia I strongly recommend) had told me that he’s been surveying students for some time and found them just as affected as corporate carpet dwellers. And a student I’ve been advising in a College in Tel Aviv has surveyed Israeli students and discovered that they acknowledge a negative impact of IO on their ability to study effectively, although they tend to be less stressed about it than their elders. He also found that two thirds of them have no coping strategies and just continue to suffer – a condition that characterized the workplace in the 1990s when I started working on this problem. The need for educating these folks definitely exists. College is, after all, an educational facility for imparting useful knowledge…  and no knowledge is more immediately useful, across the board, than how to not become a slave to your Inbox!

I believe colleges should introduce short courses in a new curriculum subject we may call Personal Information Management. Their graduates will thank them; so will the future employers of these graduates.

Is college too late?

In fact, the problem ought to be addressed even earlier, as early as the first years of high school. Not just because younger minds are easier to train, but because the IO problem has important manifestations from at least the 8th grade; between videogames and social media, our kids are becoming addicted to multitasking, and the effect on their attention span and various cognitive abilities is starting to surface in research results from academics like Prof. Clifford Nass at Stanford. Nass also has suggestions for how to reverse the damage; an educational intervention is definitely called for.

So can YOU do anything about it?

Actually, you can. If you engage with educational institutions – for example, if you’re a recruiting or HR professional in a large corporation and you maintain a dialog with universities in your community – you might bring up the subject with your academic contacts. I, for one, will be giving a lecture soon to college students about this very subject, as a result of such a discussion with their college management. I will  have to adapt my usual lecture – which is geared to a corporate setting – to address students’ realities and concerns specifically, but that should not be difficult.

And if you can’t sway the academics, you will have to make the best of it and educate the new hires as soon as you do have control of their training – when they come on board. At Intel we’d incorporated the message  in the New Hire Orientation package. You should make this a priority training for your new hires – if only to get them off to a good start!

Do you see that happening where you work – or where you study?