Do you ever get so overwhelmed with information that you end up procrastinating on all the things you should be doing to be productive?
If so, you’re not alone – a lot of work is going undone.
There seems to a looming Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) emerging from the debris of the Facebook explosion in SA.
Here are some of the symptoms of organizational ADD, as outlined in the book The Attention Economy by Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck:
1. An increased likelihood of missing key information when making decisions.
2. Diminished time for reflection on anything but simple information transactions such as email and voice mail
3.Difficulty holding other’s attention (for instance, having to increase the glitziness of presentations and the number of messages to get and keep attention)
4. Decreased ability to focus when necessary
Despite our hunger for new information constantly, the fact is, having too much information to process often keeps us from doing what we need to when we should.
If we believe that humans work best when they have some time to reflect before acting, we need to assess how much room we have for concerted attention and reflection. If you run an attention deficit too often or too long, there will eventually be serious psychological and organizational consequences.
I wrote a Thought Leader article, entitled The Business of Free, on this subject a few days ago because it’s concerning me greatly right now.
I think the issue is not so much around how much information we take in, but rather how much irrelevant information we’re expected to process in order to take action.
Of course, many of us are already sifting out the most obvious culprit – Online Advertising. Especially where it seems intrusive. According to a recent Business Week article, as few as 4 in 10,000 people (0.04%) who see ads on social networks click on them, compared to 20 in 10,000 (0.2%) across the web. Simply put, people are using social-media for connection, not consumption.
We need to rethink the way we communicate with people. As Uwe Gutschow puts it:
Brands should be helping people connect and share things better. Provide tools.
I’m still working out ways to manage my organization along the lines of Attention rather than Time and Information. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, please have fun in the comments and suggest some ways to refine your focus, and filter out irrelevant information.
p.s. We’ve just put up the new dates for the Nomadic Marketing programme at UCT GSB, where we explore solutions to this problem with the leading Marketing minds in SA.
Dave,
Once again, a great post.
With regard to the ‘obvious culprit’: It’s pretty well documented that the ad placements on facebook (the 120×600) are close on the most useless placements available. However the 300×250 within applications on facebook are actually quite effective and experience, at least, about a 10 fold increase in CTR. This is basically down to two factors.
1.) The Skyscraper is poorly placed away from the users field of attention on the page.
2.) The MPU’s are, more often than not, served by the application owner and therefore will be better suited to the audience of that application. (ie. A film application serves film orientated ads.) I’ve recently seen a 5.8% CTR on a fb application placement.
With regard to changing the way we communicate with people: I am seeing a real shift in the way big brands are viewing online ad spend. There is a definitive move from ’shouting’ at users (using standard ad formats), to creating subtle, user enhancing experiences. Whilst it hasn’t got quite to the point where brands are creating tools for users themselves, they are starting to flirt with this idea by moving to a sponsorship model where they can piggy-back innovators by putting up the cash. Whilst we shouldn’t expect banners to disappear overnight, and in fact they still serve a purpose, we can expect that less emphasis will be placed on them as brands become ‘user savvy’.
Doubt this helps with your dilemma of managing your organization, but just my 5c worth.
Grant, thank you so much for your insights. I’m sure FB knows how terrible their ad placement is – perhaps it’s supposed to be like that so it doesn’t intrude on user experience (??).
I’m all for the sponsorship approach, with brands supporting innovation. It’s not as easy to get right, and it shows a higher level of commitment on the advertiser’s part. It’s more authentic.
Dave, I had to laugh reading this post as I’ve really been struggling with this issue the last couple of weeks. Point 2 in particular!
This ties in nicely with Stephen Covey’s ‘important’ vs. ‘urgent’ definitions… so often it’s the ‘urgent but not important’ tasks which take up all our time – and the important ones which end up being neglected. There’s so much noise in the online space.
As for those Facebook ads… they are my pet hate at the moment, particularly the flashing ones telling me that I am ‘genuinely’ the 999,999th person to see them. I wonder who their ideal target customer is? Someone very gullible…
Hey Jo! Lol, those ads are ridiculous! There seems to be no relation between the ads on the sites and the information that we’ve given about ourselves on the social-networks… unless of course you really were the 999,999th person to see that ad:-p
Great post Dave – co-incidentally I have been thinking along the exact same lines the last few weeks, only to brush it aside as ‘new-year-syndrome” with information overload, same time, different year! So your post is refreshing reassuring in the knowledge that many are not alone.
Interesing stats in, “as few as 4 in 10,000 people (0.04%) who see ads on social networks click on them, compared to 20 in 10,000 (0.2%) across the web” – I can say i am one of those.. I find them increasingly annoying.
Great post though, I really enjoying reading your stuff
The question that occurred to as I read this post (and the comments) is, where does reading this post and these comments fit on my importance/urgency matrix
Hey Michelle! Thanks for your kind words and support:) Yes, it’s crazy… I have a tendency to feel guilty if I’m not busy doing something – anything. It’s like I run around putting out little fires all the time. Yikes. Time to slooooow down and reflect a bit more each day.
@Anthony: Lol! Obviously I need to step up the calibre of my posting so that it becomes an essential space for your reflection and strategy each day – not all information is equal – hopefully this is a good source!
Hey Dave
Thanks for the quote.
Pity I’m all the way over here and can’t be there for Nomadic. Maybe we can do a virtual presentation or a skype video Q&A of whats hot and happening over here.
I’m always up for sharing learnings.
lemme know
Uwe
i am having difficulties using these refferences which we were given by dave, please help me out here, i wil end up not writing my essay.
thabani, you’re going to have to be a little more specific in your request if you want help. What problems do you have with references? This is a blog, so it isn’t an acceptable academic reference – you can follow the hyperlinks in blue to go through to websites and articles that I link to, some of which you can cite for your essay.
As a student you have every right to ask lots of questions to make your life easier – but you’ve got to be specific in order to make it easier for people to answer you appropriately.
Needless to say, the surest way to fail is not to write your essay.