Innovative tools and techniques promise relief for those of us struggling with information inundation. That’s bad news for both individuals and their organizations. In one study, for example, people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to return to a work task after an e-mail interruption. It’s also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up in my job.Ĭurrent research suggests that the surging volume of available information-and its interruption of people’s work-can adversely affect not only personal well-being but also decision making, innovation, and productivity. And it’s not just the incoming tidal wave of e-mail messages and RSS feeds that causes me grief. The flood of information that swamps me daily seems to produce more pain than gain. Wait a second: Can I just stop whining about information overload?
The secret is to manage the beast while still respecting it for the beautiful creature it is.Ĭan everyone just stop whining about information overload? I mean, in the knowledge economy, information is our most valuable commodity.Īnd these days it’s available in almost infinite abundance, delivered automatically to our electronic devices or accessible with a few mouse clicks. In the end, only a multipronged approach will help you and your organization subdue the multiheaded monster of information overload. Similarly, organizations must change their cultures, for instance by establishing clear e-communication protocols. You also need to change your mind-set, perhaps by seeking help from personal-productivity experts or by simply accepting that you can’t respond to every distraction that flits across your screen. Yet, battling technological interruptions on their own turf only goes so far.
Technological aids can help, such as e-mail management software for you, a message-volume regulation system for your organization, or even more-sophisticated solutions being developed by Microsoft, IBM, and others.
And ready access to you-via e-mail, social networking, and so on-exacerbates the situation: On average, Intel executives get 300 e-mails a day, and Microsoft workers need 24 minutes to return to work after each e-mail interruption. Ready access to useful information comes at a cost: As the volume increases, the line between the worthwhile and the distracting starts to blur. HBR contributing editor Hemp reports on practical ways for individuals and organizations to avoid getting too much of a good thing. In conclusion, male microchimerism is frequent and widely distributed in the human female brain.The value of information in the knowledge economy is indisputable, but so is its capacity to overwhelm consumers of it. Results also suggested lower prevalence (p=0.03) and concentration (p=0.06) of male microchimerism in the brains of women with Alzheimer's disease than the brains of women without neurologic disease. Male microchimerism was present in multiple brain regions. We report that 63% of the females (37 of 59) tested harbored male microchimerism in the brain. Targeting the Y-chromosome-specific DYS14 gene, we performed real-time quantitative PCR in autopsied brain from women without clinical or pathologic evidence of neurologic disease (n=26), or women who had Alzheimer's disease (n=33). acquisition of male DNA by a woman while bearing a male fetus). In this study, we quantified male DNA in the human female brain as a marker for microchimerism of fetal origin (i.e. Microchimerism of fetal as well as maternal origin has recently been reported in the mouse brain. Fetal microchimerism, however, has not been investigated in the human brain. In humans, naturally acquired microchimerism has been observed in many tissues and organs.