Information Overload
Originally published at jkparker.ca. Please leave any comments there.
Interruption, a hot topic in Human-Computer Interaction, is getting a lot of play in the mainstream media these days. Yesterday’s New York Times had a nice article summarizing some recent studies on interruption and multitasking.
And earlier this week my father directed me towards an article from this month’s Walrus (registration required): Driven to Distraction.
Wireless devices encourage ill-advised multi-tasking: driving and checking BlackBerrys; talking on the phone and reading email; working on two or more complex projects at once. In corporate meetings, participants discreetly text one another or check email while the boss is talking. University classrooms are now filled with students tapping away at their wireless laptops. They may be focused on a document or a website related to the lecture or they may not. Digital technologies invite disruption and pose a daunting challenge to the possibility of a group of individuals applying their collective attention to a particular chore.
Sound familiar? I know I can identify! The irony of it all is that, in the hopes of streamlining my life I actually add to my interruption by subscribing to RSS feeds for sites such as Lifehacker and 43 Folders.
In fact, there’s a whole industry emerging around the idea of increasing productivity in this age of endless distractions. Somewhere near the bottom of my haphazard to-do list (which is also online, by the way) is my plan to read Getting Things Done - which I’ve bought but not yet looked at. Because though I’ll never be able to eliminate distractions entirely, maybe I can at least learn to better manage them.