AustinWalne

Steve Rubel, who writes the excellent blog Micropersuasions, has some interesting thoughts about dealing with the deluge of information that we’re increasingly faced with while still being informed.

One of the most important skills executives need today is the know-how to manage and harness their personal information flow.

The Attention Crash is a crisis in global business that is getting worse every day. By 2009, the Radicati Group predicts that we’ll spend 41% of our time managing email. Now add to that the IMs, documents, Facebook pokes, RSS feeds, Twitter tweets and text messages coming at us and we’re officially way oversubscribed.

Unfortunately, the problem will not abate. Human attention is finite. It doesn’t scale. Worse, the pace of change today is so rapid there’s a huge need to stay digitally savvy.

I’ve found myself faced with this problem recently. I’ve started trying to squeeze in reading useful books on the metro during my commute or listening to podcasts while at the gym. I make short necessary phone calls walking to and from the metro (can provide an easy excuse to get off the phone too.) Clearing out my inbox each day and making good use of outlook folders helps me a lot. Check out Steve’s suggestions here.