Information overload, memory and priorities
October 2005

These sources of information are avid seekers and consumers of our attention and energy.

In our modern, dynamic and continuously changing competitive environment, the professionals who are able to absorb and integrate an important amount of information, have significantly more chances to succeed.

Additionally it has been shown that successful professionals are much more able to read and acquire knowledge from sectors beyond their main field of interest.

For example a business director may be able to read about businesses but may also be interested to learn and acquire knowledge about the psychology of managers. Simultaneously he may be able to read and understand about science, history, archeology, psychology, music, theology and other subjects that may not be directly linked to his subject.

There are of course experts that recommend a quick reading, even superficially, if possible of everything that comes to our attention. The supporters of the quick reading approach, believe that even by just seeing all these, in fact we retain the basic, important facts.

In this way they insist, we are in position to maximize the exploitation of the plethora of information that we regularly receive and sometime, when needed we will have in our disposition much more useful information.

However, we believe that there is a danger of overload and fatigue. We may even talk about information indigestion.

Indeed, in a similar manner, as we overload our digestive system with large amounts of unneeded food and cause indigestion, we can overload our brains with information. This data accumulation cause difficulties to our memory and the processing, integrating and storing of the information will be impaired.

The opponents of the first theory, support a very careful selection of what we read and where we give our attention. To use again our example with the digestive system, it is better in front of a rich buffet with lots of choices, to carefully select the food that we like the most and avoid overloading our plate with almost everything. In this way we minimize our chances for an indigestion.

The second theory advocates giving importance to priorities and selection. Of course this is a lesson to be learned and it is not an easy task. To know priorities, needs preparation and concentration.

Knowing what we want, means never to forget our targets and act accordingly by putting beside non relevant information and focus our attention on information relevant to our immediate interest.

Research has shown that those who follow the broader quantitative approach, have less clear vision, targets and priorities in their mind. They are as well more often unorganized. They feel that they have to read or see all or otherwise they might miss something important.

On the contrary the followers of the second school of thought, select from the plethora of information, the essential that has immediate relevance with their priorities and their targets at the specific time. They put beside all rest, knowing that when they will need something in the future that they will not see now, they will be able to find it.

Our opinion is that there is not a magic solution that applies for everybody and under all circumstances.

However a careful selection from the overwhelming information that we are subjected to, can effectively help us better to achieve our targets. Definitely, in order to arrive there, we must have clearly in our minds what we really want. If in the future we will need information for something else, we will then search and find it.

In conclusion, in order to protect ourselves from information overload and to allow an optimal functioning of our memory, it is important to have clear ideas of what we want, to be concentrated, and our targets must be well defined and constantly remembered.

In this way we save time and energy that we would otherwise loose if we were to follow a quantitative, unconsolidated policy of absorption of information.

Bibliography:

American Educational Research Association