We all struggle with the pressure of time. The need to get this one last thing accomplished on a Friday afternoon at work. To listen to everyone, read everything, clear our inboxes, and be leaders for our community.
Pushing ourselves to the brink with accomplishments and blog posts and Twitter is what we, especially Social Media Evangelists, do because it’s what we believe in and what we love. However, sometimes the information flow gets to be too much some days. Sometimes we have a lot to process on days when we feel like we haven’t had enough coffee.
On that note, here’s some thoughts and ideas to make those days happen less often:
- Filter better: I’ve mentioned Clay Shirky’s talk at Web 2.0 where he talks about filter failure. The web has made it possible for easy access to a wealth of information. While there is everything we’ve ever wanted to know on the internet, there are also things that we don’t really need to process. We have to learn to seek the information we need to know.
- Retaining your common sense: Bloggers have to read and process so much information on a daily basis to get their jobs done. Keeping the flow going and avoiding burnout is important. Lorelle asked for advice on how to avoid burnout with all the information flowing during the normal course of a day. What suggestions do you have to avoid blogger burnout?
- Pick the things that work for you: My friend C.C. Chapman gave a talk at the New Marketing Summit Wednesday and pointed to the tools and things you should be using to monitor your social media presence. He makes some great suggestions and hints at a workflow BUT pick the tools that work for YOU. Not the one that your friend recommended, but the one that you try out that fits into your workflow and makes your day more productive.
- Inbox Zero? Guilt Overload: We all have email that we really need to respond to but no time to do so. I’ve never followed an Inbox Zero policy, just make sure that people get answers as soon as possible. If you really need an email policy, give it a shot, but lose the guilt.
- Friends or “Friends”? : Yeah that weird looking guy on Facebook is attempting to friend you again or a spammer on Twitter has started following you. Mitch Joel talks about his limits on friending. Judging a book based on it’s cover is hard but make sure that you find the value before you accept that “friend” offer.
Okay, that’s it for even more information for you to process. If you’re having a hard time getting things done, you might want to stop and ask yourself where the problem lies. Make sure you keep the filters on and restructure what’s not working.
What other suggestions do you have for beating information overload?
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