Communication Circles

The good news is there is so much information available to be consumed for anyone who wants it. The bad news is the amount of information coming at you can overwhelm you.

This trade-off got me thinking about the communication circles we sit in the middle of. When I say the middle of I do mean the middle as many of us (myself included) work in an environment where we talk on the phone while checking our email and engaging in one or more IM conversations and maybe even try to keep up on the corporate micro-blogging site.

The interesting part is that unlike computers, humans cannot really multi-task. When we start to read our e-mail or respond to IMs we stop listening to the phone call we are suppose to be listening to. I know we think we are still listening, but the number of calls that I am on that generate the "I'm sorry, I was multi-tasking, can you repeat the question" comment tells me most people can only barely manage multiple concurrent tasks.

On top of the multi-tasking issue, there is also the question of what if any of the information flowing at us can we or should we retain. On one hand we grab bits of information and put them on our calendars or our to-do lists. The rest of the information just flows at us at amazing speeds. We capture some in our memory for use with work, family or play (how else can you win that trivia game), but the rest flows past us and remains part of the river of information. Our best hope is that we retain the important stuff and have the tools (like search engines) to fish it out of the information river when we need it again.

There are no easy answers to managing your communication circle, but being aware of the channels and leaning how to manage each one, while understanding the tools needed to fish out the information you need from the information river will go a long way.

Tell us about your information circle and what kind of tools you use to stay afloat.