Audio available at http://goo.gl/44xPsX. This 13 minute presentation was made on Information Overload Awareness Day to the IORG. It focuses on a single psychological object that is at the root of all information overload, bar none.

1. Three Surprising Reasons Why
People Can’t Stop Being
Overloaded
Francis Wade
2Time Labs
Tune into the audio here http://goo.gl/44xPsX

2. Context
A few things you may already
Know
Do
Believe

3. Know
Walking through a library doesn’t trigger a
feeling of information overload.
(But walking through the rain without an
umbrella does make you wet…)

4. Know 2
A random stream of tweets also
doesn’t trigger a feeling of
information overload…

5. Know 3
Neither does glancing at someone
else’ email Inbox

6. Unless…. The “someone else” is your
boss and your name is on the subject
line!

7. Do
you discard a lot of messages – paying
attention to a handful and
acting on an even smaller number

8. You Believe… Perhaps…
The problem does not lie in bits and
bytes of digital content. In not
having time to somehow process all
of them.

9. You
A Thought Leader
(compared to your peers)

10. Our Journey
From – easy answers that prove we are stuck
To – having a fresh angle on the problem,
hopefully grounded in research

11. Hypothesis:
Overload is a psychological
phenomena that has its roots in a
process.
But has tangible effects

12. Time Demand
A time demand is an internal,
individual commitment to complete
an action in the future
– A psychological object –
with physical properties

13. Triggered by…
Just about anything – a thought, a call,
an email, a memo, a meeting etc.

14. Different from a task
By definition, a time demand is
defined by the agency or
ownership of the individual.

15. In our teens…
We discover a connection…
Between completing time demands
and fulfilling the vast majority of our
goals

16. An Inescapable Link
All except the simplest goals involve the
creation and management
of
time demands
So we teach ourselves habits, practices
and rituals

17. In order to…
…“hold on” to time demands… to
prevent them from slipping through
the cracks

18. Overweight
Eating calories and exercising as if you
were a teenager

19. Overwhelm
Creating and managing time demands
as if you were a teenager

20. 1950’s
Your teenage habits, practices and rituals
for managing time demands lasted a
lifetime
In a day, you see more information than
your grandparents saw in a month

21. 2010’s
Your teenage habits, practices and
rituals are stale within months /
years
Because… you see more information in
a day…

22. Plus, there’s Technology
…supercharges our tendency to create
time demands.
So did the recession.
Leading to…

23. A backlog
We live in a backlog of time demands
(that we have forgotten we created
with our habits, practices and rituals)

24. For example
How many items can you leave as reminders on
your desk…
before that tactic becomes useless, and then
the source of a new bigger problem?
5? 15? 27?

25. We try to cope by fixing…
• Our filters
• Our manager
• Our projects
• Our corporate employer
• Our world

26. Solution 1 – Improve Throughput
• Change the methods you use to manage time
demands – via the 7 fundamental skills*
• Start wherever you are now, analyze it and
make incremental, planned changes based on
best-practices
*The 7 fundamental skills are: Capturing, Emptying, Tossing, Acting
Now, Storing, Scheduling and Listing
Ref. Wade, Francis (2014.) Perfect Time-Based Productivity

27. Solution 2 – Upgrade the Quality
What would stop you from creating new time
demands?
1. Better information at your fingertips about the
impact of current commitments. e.g. 3 hours of
space left in the next 168 hours. Not just
gut feelings.
2. Better estimates of the duration of time demands –
reversing the planning fallacy

28. Solution 3 – Better scheduling
Moving beyond the use of
- infinitely long To-Do lists
- appointment calendars limited to meetings
- mental juggling of time demands
To auto-scheduling our time, thereby living
within our means i.e. a time demand diet

29. 3 Surprising Reasons
We can’t stop being overloaded
1. We don’t know that we create time demands
2. We get stuck in idiosyncratic teenage habits
3. We focus on improving the wrong things e.g.
our gadgets instead of the 7 fundamentals

30. Thank You
www.2time-sys.com
@fwade
Let’s continue the conversation after
the Q&A in the Information Overload
Network group on Linkedin
“Between stimulus and response there is
a space. In that space we have a choice.
In that choice lies our freedom.”
– Viktor Frankl