Happy Information Overload Awareness Day! Here's Some TIps for Reducing It!

Photo by Monster

Today is Information Overload Awareness Day.  The purpose is to call attention to the problem of Information Overload, how it impacts both individuals and organizations, and what can be done to lessen its impact.

Here's one way you might celebrate.  Take my information overload quiz.  Look at your score and ask yourself the following reflection questions.   Then pick one idea to reduce information overload in your life from this list.

Mapping Strategy to Metrics, Benchmarking, and ROI

• Do an annual ROI for your blog (and other social media activities) using benchmarking and metrics
• Learn to use the tools that help you measure success
• Don't set up a presence on every social network in the world all at once. 
• Do research first and implement one presence at a time with specific goals and metrics.
• If you've set specific goals and metrics to measure those goals over time, if after 3-6 months you have no tangible or intangible results, don't be afraid to move on or change something.

Use Help Applications That Streamline Social Media Tasks

• If you are not reading blogs and web sites in an RSS Reader, make that your New Year's resolution.
• If you are using a RSS reader,evaluate if it is still works for you.
• If you have started following too many people on Twitter by choice or accident, use Tweetdeck and create groups.
• Set up a social media dashboard with google apps for your listening, separate it from your work email and tools.
  

Make Time for Reflection

• Build in daily or at least weekly time for reflection on your social media strategy and use to make improvements.
• Ask, how much progress are we making towards our goals?   What are our successes and challenges?  What needs to change?
• Step back and hit the pause button every now and then to determine if you're in a trench and how to get out
• Stop twittering from your cell phone in the bathroom and use that time to think about how you could be more efficient using a particular social media tool.
• Do a regular task analysis of your social media work flow looking for redundant actions or where you've simply lapsed into automatic pilot or bad habits.  For example, are you bookmarking everything you come across into del.icio.us by habit or just the resources you actually need to retrieve?  Are you impulse adopting tools?
• Learn from nonprofits and other organizations that have shared their social media case studies
• Starting a personal blog which is an excellent way to build reflection time into your day

Take Breaks

• Remember to turn the damn computer off and take a walk
• Try a "Day without YOU FILL IN THE BLANK."  It can help you evaluate whether a tool is really valuable.
• Take a hiatus from using a particular tool (a Twitter Hiatus can be good for your resetting goals or understanding any bad habits.)
• Understand how information overload might be effecting you and take a break to assess and rethink
• Get a memory upgrade

Create Good Social Media Habits

• If you are just beginning a social media plan, use the Power of Less Challenge to establish good habits form the get go.
• Live in a tool or technique for at least month before adding something new.  Try tweaking the strategy for several months in a row by building in reflection time.
• Attend NTEN's NTC Conference in April and attend the social media tracks
• Try to attend at least one social media industry conference (ask for nonprofit pricing or scholarship, if not already available)
• Attend some of the FREE social media gatherings or meetups in your city and network with other nonprofits like Net2Tuesdays
• Attend some of the FREE gatherings for social media professionals like the social media breakfast or Social Media Club and get advice or help learning.

Use Time Management Techniques

• Set a consistent schedule for your social media tasks and stick to it
• Use a time out timer to help you track time spent and keep on track
• Use Stephen Covey's Pick the Big Stone's Method and ask yourself if you only had time for three social networking sites what would they be?
• Allocate specific chunks of time for your social media execution. 
• Don't live on Twitter, your blog,  Facebook, or your email.   Check in once or twice a day.
• Write down your social media tasks and get those done during your social media time.  Avoid getting distracted
• Build in or schedule time for discovery and serendipity which is a good thing for social media, but not so good if you don't track it or manage it.

Filter

• Be your own filter
• Understand what filtering means and why it is important for social media
• Be a digital curator with your electronic information, not a packrat
• If you're using Google Reader, use the Reader Trends page to figure out what blogs you're actually reading regularly and unsubscribe from those you are not.   
• Use these filtering tips to make your social bookmarking and RSS reader more efficient.
• Get the most out of your RSS Reader so you can scan more in less time and get new ideas
• Use tools like PostRank to filter your feeds so you can easily pick out the best content
• Don't limit high quality information, filter out the crap
• Rethink your relationship with information, goals, and work and streamline accordingly.

Simplify

• Learn the techniques of simplify and apply to your social media use
• Do you have a friending policy?
• Are you just accepting everyone on every network? Do you need to prune?
• Ask yourself, do you just want to collect friends on a social network or develop a deeper relationship?
• Figure out a following strategy on Twitter that works for you - so many people, so little time.
• Figure out what your optimal number of friends and followers for your goals
• Redesign and recharge your blog

Slow Down

• Explore tools that help you slow down that river of RSS information
• Rediscover your blog and blog at a snail's pace  or grow a slow online community

How do you avoid information overload and be effective using social media?

Comments

[Marco Campana]

Awesome and helpful as always, but I can't help but ROTFLMAO at the level of information overload contained just within this article! Nicely done, let the reading begin! :-)

[Pam McAllister]

+1 to Marco's comment! Still love the post and the idea.

I've been keeping a "not to do" list myself ... things I've chosen to stop doing, at least for now. Has been a good way to simplify.

One piece of that is a news diet, which mostly is to reduce the inflow of "doom and gloom" that seems to be everywhere. Sometimes it's not so much the quantity of information but the quality.

Fortunately, there are some things worth reading, like this blog. Thanks, Beth.

[Joe Mueller]

Great post! I'm a big fan of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" method. It's extremely helpful with managing time, filtering and simplifying. Social media is only going to grow in importance in the nonprofit world, so marketers and communicators need to start making some decisions on future priorities. Thanks for sharing these resources. They're most helpful.