Often we only learn to value something when we feel its absence, so perhaps it makes sense that perpetually roaming travel writer Pico Iyer is a powerful advocate for stillness. In a recent interview he discusses the value of quiet for the perpetually plugged-in. Read more »
The future of work is already here. It is just already distributed, one might say. The freelance economy, microtasking, mobile workers, coworking spaces, crowdsourcing: All of these point to how work is increasingly shifting from the twentieth-century model of Taylorism (think scientific management applied to labor processes such as assembly-line production and fixed workplaces) to a more flexible, hyperspecialized and connected workforce. This report examines the new world of work, from the devices and software services we use to the growing role of social media, the importance of a group-centric mentality and how the roles of employees, managers and organizations are evolving. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
I make extensive use of smart folders and tags to sort my email into logical groups that I can easily process all at once. The key is to use rules and filters that automatically sort my email without any additional intervention from me. Read more »
Media guru Clay Shirky once famously said that the problem of the modern age isn’t information overload at all, it’s “filter failure” — and many new services have been built to help with that. But Eli Pariser says the cure could be worse than the disease. Read more »
A primary source of information overload is our email inboxes. While I’ve previously mentioned a few strategies for dealing with email overload, I think it’s a good time for a post with comprehensive rundown of my tips for managing email. Read more »
The key to cutting information overload is to more efficiently find the data that you want among the data that you don’t care about. I wanted to share some of the techniques that I use to hack and filter my RSS feed to prioritize relevant information. Read more »
The biggest problem with information overload for most people is that it is cumulative and it comes in from a variety of sources. The source that people think about when you mention information overload is the huge amount of content that we consume online. Read more »
The problem of information overload is one of the most frustrating and inspiring issues on the web today — inspiring because of all the cool, hard and unimagined ways it will be dealt with. Today we bring you Cascaad, the latest startup attacking the problem. Read more »
The iPhone has been our Golden Child for over two years and we’re much accustomed to reading how it’s setting this record, or breaking that record, or changing “the game” in some revolutionary way. I’m not complaining in the slightest — credit where credit is due […] Read more »
We all have to follow never-ending streams of information to varying degrees. Small business owners and web workers have to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in their markets and with their customers and clients. Writers and bloggers read for inspiration and to follow […] Read more »
When I’m talking to people about social web sites, one of the questions I often get asked (usually just after the one about whether you actually need to join all the social networks, just because everyone else is) is “how do you keep up with everything?” […] Read more »
As a freelancer, I spend most of my time trying to manage information overload. However, despite this obsession with efficiently gathering information, there are also times when I actively seek out that overload. While a fire hose of notifications and feeds can be too distracting when I am working on client work, if I am looking for inspiration, I want to see as much information as possible in the hope that something will catch my eye and provide the inspiration that I need to kick start a new blog post or some other effort.
Here are a few of my favorite tools for embracing information overload. Read more »
