Dealing with Info-stress and Attention Fatigue

Does this strike a chord?:

"The flow of messages and content faced by information workers is increasing but their attention spans remain fixed and limited."

That comes from an introduction to a report by the Burton Group's Craig Roth catchily (sorry!) entitled 'Techniques to Address Attention Fatigue and Info-Stress in the Too-Much-Information Age'.

Sadly, you have to be a Burton Group client to get hold of the full report, but here's a tip: type "Enterprise Attention Management" into Roth's blog.

Information overload has been a serious issue for a long time. Humans are human and, on our own, we simply cannot significantly improve our thinking speed and work capacity. This leads to a sense of defeat, maybe despair, certainly inadequacy as we become overwhelmed by our inability to deal with the volume and, sometimes, the interruptive nature of incoming information. Without help and guidance, we whirl from one information feed to another: email; instant messaging; wikis; blogs; telephone; ... Weren't these things invented to make us more effective? Often, they can get in the way of our 'real' work and the result is that everything receives less attention than it deserves.

Full marks to Roth for getting the subject out in the open and starting a debate. He calls the phenomenon "attention fatigue" and advocates an "Enterprise Attention Management" (EAM) strategy to deal with it.

Unlike many acronyms that pour out of the IT world, this one could catch on. It is optimistic and provides a focal point for those trying to tackle the problem. In Roth's words, EAM offers "a method for improving the effectiveness of an enterprise's information workers by providing culture, processes, and tools to gain control over the messages sent, received, and discovered by its information workers."