Do you feel oppressed by the sheer volume of phone calls from cell phones, voice mail, pagers, incredible amounts of email, postal and interoffice mail, faxes, and meetings upon endless meetings — and all of it passing on "critical information?" Are you worried that you will miss something if you do not see absolutely everything before making a decision? By getting organized and being selective about what which messages you return, you can stay informed.
To manage information overload effectively, you can use an information triage strategy. Doctors in hospital emergency rooms decide which patient needs immediate attention. They do not fix a broken finger before attending to a heart attack just because the broken finger came in first. Triage applies to your work - even when lives are not at stake. It involves prioritizing, delegating and just letting things slide. Remember: all information is not created equal. What you want is the most current and critical information - only that information without which nothing else makes sense.
You are not alone if you feel overwhelmed or frustrated at not being able to find what you are looking for. Roper Starch Worldwide, a marketing firm, calls not finding what you want "web rage." A survey by Roper Starch Worldwide found that seventy-one percent of internet users regularly encountered frustration during searches about twelve minutes after trying to make sense out of inaccurate or irrelevant search site results. But there are lots of ways to organize your information and reduce information overload.
Email is great - until you are suffocating under the weight of too much of it! Here are some ways to take control.
Read the subject heading first and make your decision whether to open it or kill it based on that. Deleting unopened email is the only way to stay atop the mounting heap. It is ruthless but effective.
Learn the difference between the person who sends you laughs and the person who controls your paycheck. Guess whose email belongs on top of your priority list?
Delegate or forward email messages that should not be yours in the first place - especially if you share email duties with others.
Some people can ignore their emails. If you cannot, then eliminate the volume by filtering them as they come in. Either route them to folders of your choosing - eliminating unnecessary ones in the process - or use an email program that automatically routes your mail into folders. Pegasus Mail (a shareware program), Eudora Pro and Outlook all do this. Nearly all email programs allow you to sort mail by dates, by sender and, in some cases, by subject. Filtering will help eliminate spam (unsolicited email). Filtering tools vary, but most allow you to select words and throw out messages that contain them. Or, you can choose words and prioritize messages that contain them. For example, filter emails containing the phrases "make money" and "$$$" and the program will send them to your delete file without you having to read them. Filtering software, is effective.
On your browser, locate the "Find" command when you are viewing your email messages. All email programs include a "Find" command that will locate messages containing specified words. Use it to save time.
Netscape calls them Bookmarks; Internet Explorer calls them Favorites. They are the web addresses that you want to save. Most people gather too many shortcuts and then cannot find them when they are needed. Use the "Find" command in either of the major browsers to sort through your saved links. Better yet, both versions let you organize your bookmarks into folders and then let you create new names for the links - names that are easier to remember. There are dozens of good software programs for organizing bookmarks. One particularly useful program is NetVisualize Favorites Organizer. It stores your bookmarks in folders and captures a thumbnail image of your favorite pages, which saves you time.
Another useful tool is PowerMarks. This tool helps you keyword search through your bookmarks, check to see that they are still active sites, and also lets you store the sites on a remote server. Compass Cross-Browser Bookmark Manager is another easy to use toll that lets you trade bookmarks between browsers.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Charlie W. Mysen at 09102010
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