Information overload - six steps to avoid it

Clarity and 20/20 Vision is a blessing when it occurs but without it a whole range of issues and emotions can occur. If you’re reading this Blog you may well be interested in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Social Networking and Internet Marketing. These rapidly developing topics have the potential to very quickly lead to information overload. Unless recognised and dealt with quickly, information overload can be very damaging and de-motivating. Here is a quick outline of my journey over the last couple of months and some lessons I’ve learned.

Enthusiasm

I was keen to get to the cutting edge of Internet Marketing very quickly. Initial Google searches quickly took me to sign-on pages for various ‘offers’. It’s very tempting to subscribe to these attractive offers, so clearly their marketing is working. I also ordered some (4) related books from Amazon, two about ‘Personal Branding’, two about cutting edge marketing thinking. The Amazon books arrived quickly and the content looks very attractive. Also, my in-box was quickly filled up with emails, triggered by the follow-up marketing activity behind the initial offers I subscribed to.

Exponential opportunities

So the reading starts, with a chapter or two from each book, to get a feel for their style, and the journey they would take me on, so that’s a few hours. Going through the in-box went up from a few minutes a day to maybe a couple of hours a day. Initially this was all in the name of ‘education’, and the enthusiasm is still high. Very quickly there were additional ‘attractive offers’ coming through. This also included various video pitches and webinars – which can be 30-60 minutes each. These are very cleverly constructed, initially providing great insight, value and education but all the while building desire for the ‘closure’. Subtly their message is that there’s loads more that you need to learn. Then the finale arrives, with the offer to ‘sign-up for the chargeable plan’. Don’t get me wrong, it’s usually good material and it’s also clever marketing. But it quickly generates information overload, and also anxiety that success will be elusive without various additional information and training resources.

Unfinished business

OK, so the information keeps coming, but now there’s a big additional element. ICT, Social Networking and Internet Marketing all need to be put into action in order to bed in the knowledge and gain some experience and results. So now the task list starts growing as to-dos are added in increasing numbers. At this stage there is a danger that ideas from the latest email go to the top of the priority queue on the basis of ‘I’ll just do X, while it’s top of mind’. Also, going into a new area with lots of new content there is no frame of reference. Quite deliberately, in order to take on new concepts it can be helpful if judgement is suspended. When you learnt to ride a bike or to swim, logic said you would fall off or sink, but somehow you had to block that out and give it a go. Learning new Online marketing topics I think are similar.

Going under...

So the emails keep coming, the books are half read and the task list is still growing. Unfortunately the tasks being tackled are never as simple as the ‘author’ suggests. If only it was Step 1, 2, 3 done. Each task seems to turn into a mini-project. And it seems that every project being tackled require further reading to understand them to the next level. So now the prioritisation really starts to kick-in. No longer is it a case of prioritising individual tasks, but now whole sections are prioritised. And unfortunately in the early days there are few results to show for it, especially if the updating of social networks, blogs etc. is not done regularly.

The ‘light at the end of the tunnel’

There does come a time when the mist starts to clear, believe me. I’m now at a stage where I feel I can look back at the process I’ve been through, what I’ve learned, what I’ve done, and how I’ve developed. Things that have helped are:

• my frame of reference has been sufficiently updated to enable pretty good prioritisation to take place
• tasks are now taking less time and mini-projects get delivered
• maintenance and updating of social network sites is becoming part of the daily routine
• my email in-box can be processed quicker as I can sort the wheat from the chaff easier
• results are starting to come in, which is increasing my satisfaction levels

Lessons learned

There are too many to itemise, but to pick six big ones:

1. Get organised and stay organised: have a structure for filing documents, emails and userid/passwords so that you can file and find them quickly and easily
2. Plan the use of your time: allocate time slots and stick to them, and stick to the task in hand
3. Don’t take on too much in parallel, or at least be prepared to drop things before you drown
4. Realise that you won’t understand everything first time round, but do ‘give it a go’
5. Accept ‘adequate’ and don’t aim for perfection, mistakes are not the end of the world
6. Appreciate that progress and success means ‘going public’ on social networks, so be bold!

I have also been very fortunate to link up with a mentor and a support organisation that provides education materials about social networking and internet marketing.

If you’d like to find out more about this group from me and my colleagues then visit my website at www.blueprint2020.com

If you want to enter your details I’ll get in touch with you ‘on the other side’

Mark.