One frame from an old comic illustrates some lessons to keep in mind when battling time, fighting the paper war and coping with information overload.
Maps provide an excellent visual summary of a situation. Maps are useful tools in as much as:
the value they provide exceeds the cost of their construction and maintenance. Value is reflected in time saved, insights gained and the quality of decisions
the summary enables a focus on the pertinent issues and not detract from them. A good map enables an immediate view of different levels of details and their relationships
they enable the situation to be rapidly modelled by users, and users remain cognisant that the map is a representation of the situation, rather than the situation itself
the map can be easily updated and maintained. The generals have to guide the battle, not become immersed in map maintenance activities
Imagine if the generals :
crowded round the radio in the background, listening to messages and traffic
had to spend a day painting some new flags for the map or making some more trees
What effect would it have on the battle or on the decisions they made? Alternately, what effect would it have on your battles if you were constantly suffered from:
inadequate maps (long written reports; information scattered between e-mails, written notes or computer files; long lists that are curtailed by the edges of your screen)
distractions (e-mail; social networking sites)
huge time costs in maintaining your systems (transferring information between formats, software applications and platforms; report writing)
Mind map software and other forms of summarising information are useful. If you leave it to others to provide the tools and do not assess the effectiveness of the tool, it's more likely than not to result in your becoming distracted from your "big picture".
In the context of this post, it means losing the battle.
Given the size and cost of the average motor-car, it is surprising how often people (by which I mean me!) forget where they parked it. Knowing where you left the car is on the list of things you should know for a productive and hassle-free life.
Given the importance and value of ideas, it is surprising how often people do not know when their most idea-productive times are.
If you don't know when this is - other than a generic 'in the shower' - I suggest you keep a diary for a week, listing the times and activities when ideas floated into your head. Once you know the times and activities that produce a flow of ideas, you are in a position to increase the number or duration of these opportunities.
Leaving the flow of ideas to serendipity would be a pity when the small effort of finding out can yield big results.
Recently I read about video synopsis, a new technology for the security industry.
Video cameras are used across the world to record what happens in front of the camera. A problem has been that reviewing the recording takes as long as the period it covers. In other words, reviewing what Camera 3 'saw' between midnight and 6AM takes six hours. To save time, the person reviewing the recording could play it back at a higher speed, but risked missing fleeting but vital evidence.
The video synopsis technology separates moving objects and inert background. When reviewing the recording, moving objects are clustered, meaning the operator can view the movements of many hours in a few minutes.
Moving figures are played back at their actual speed and are tagged with the time they appeared. In this way, individuals and events that warrant further examination can be played back separately.
Video synopsis is a good example of an innovation that arises from combining existing technologies in a new way. The existence of technology does not create innovation - the recombination of existing technologies does. Recombination arises from trial and error or thinking the problem through.
The starting point of the solution is a clear appreciation of the problem. As shown on the left, video synopsis succeeds because it puts 'review' into a different quadrant from 'record' in terms of time, without compromising 'accuracy'.
In my experience, many knowledge workers expect technologists to provide solutions to their information problems. This is a pity because it is the worker who understands their role and the problems they face. If they developed an appreciation of the problem and recombined their existing tools, they would create many powerful solutions to their knowledge problems.
Developments such as video synopsis arise because:
it is a unique solution to a widespread problem;
its intellectual property can be protected;
development costs can be amortised across the application of the technology to many different locations.
It is a business model that works.
Many years ago Peter Drucker wrote about knowledge workers trying to answer the questions: what information do I need? In what form? Drucker prescribed that they 'must assume information responsibility. Unfortunately most people expect the chief information officer or some other technologist to answer those questions. That won't do.'
For information problems, the video synopsis business model is not available. Getting the technologist to solve your particular problem is too expensive. The solution may not have wider application.
The answer for knowledge workers is to develop an appreciation of existing technologies, developing the ability to analyse problems and applying trial and error to recombine existing technologies.
You might think this experiment is too stupid to contemplate, let alone do... and it is. On the other hand, it is what many 'knowledge workers' attempt each day: to find coherence - meaning even - from the e-mails they receive. Each one makes sense as a structured message, but taken as a whole, each one is the merely the next page of an incoherent, uncoordinated narrative. Page 148 of Austen's Emma precedes page 23 of Dante's Inferno, followed by page 71 of the instruction booklet for your calculator (printed in 12 languages and the page you picked up is literally foreign to you).
Framed as an experiment, it shows how ridiculous the venture is.
Meaning or coherence doesn't come from more information or more data. It comes from your ability to keep your purpose 'front of mind' when you read the next page.
Sometimes this ability is called the 'helicopter view'.
Information technology helps not so much in what it does, but in as much as it enables you to juxtapose purpose alongside the next batch of data.
For this game you need two or more players. Each player will need access to the internet and, in particular, Wikipedia.
The game is a race. The aim is to get from the 'start' to the 'destination' before your opponent does.
The game starts with one player clicking 'Random article' in Wikipedia for a start point. The second player clicks 'Random article' and tells the other players the 'destination' article. As soon as the start and destination are known, each player goes to the start article. When all players are ready, play commences and each player clicks Wikipedia links to get to the destination article first.
You have probably heard the (apocryphal?) story from World-War 1. The order: 'send reinforcements we are going to advance' was passed along the trenches, whispered from soldier to soldier. When the message arrived, it had changed to 'send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance'.
What caused the problem? Soldiers hoping to prevent the advance by altering the message? Fatigue? Mishearing the message they had heard for the one they wish they had heard?
The story is a classic, used to illustrate the importance of ensuring the integrity of information.
In our time, we have sophisticated communications systems. Surely, we can ensure the integrity of information as it passes along the chain?
The answer is 'mostly yes' or 'no'.
In A Bug and a Crash, James Gleick explains the destruction of the Ariane5 rocket on 4th June 1996. The guidance system tried to convert data from 64-bit format to 16-bit format and triggered a chain of events ultimately leading to the US$7 billion catastrophe. You can view the result on the right.
Gleick observed: 'Software built up over years from millions of lines of code, branching and unfolding and intertwining, comes to behave more like an organism than a machine.'
The amount of digital data on the web has been estimated as being more that one zettabyte (1021 bytes).
As the volume of information grows, it is unsurprising that an increasing number of people are feeling pressured by 'information overload'.
You might be surprised to learn, however, that it isn't a recent problem. In her book, Too much to know, Ann Blair traces information overload as far back as the 3rd or 4th century BC to the Book of Ecclesiastes and relates Seneca's 1st century lament 'distringit liborum multitudo' ('the abundance of books is distraction').
Blair is a professor of history at Harvard University. In her examination of the past, Blair finds lessons for our present time: 'It's important to remember that information overload is not unique to our time, lest we fall into doomsaying. At the same time, we need to proceed carefully in the transition to electronic media, lest we lose crucial methods of working that rely on and foster thoughtful decision making. Like generations before us, we need all the tools for gathering and assessing information that we can muster—some inherited from the past, others new to the present. Many of our technologies will no doubt rapidly seem obsolete, but, we can hope, not human attention and judgment, which should continue to be the central components of thoughtful information management.'
