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After a bit of thinking I came up with a little surprise. Consider your rate of inputs ("I") vs. rate of outputs ("O"). We have these possibilities: I >> O (far more coming in that going out) I > O (a bit more coming in "") I ~= O (approximately equal) I < O (a little less coming in "") I << O (far fewer incoming than outgoing)

Drowning and desperate. This is that "utterly out of control" feeling, the sense that you'll never, ever be able to catch up. This is the source of big backlogs of email and paper. Work is falling through the cracks, and you have a reputation of "Better follow up in person or it probably won't get done." Grievously unsustainable Sinking (maybe slowly, maybe fast). This is the sense of "I just can't quite keep up," and leads to an overall anxiety about work. Your inboxes are increasing, with occasional "binge" emptying happening. Unsustainable Steady state, but brittle. You're just able to keep up if it's "a good day," but the slightest lag in work means you start falling behind - a day or two, say. And vacation or a trip? You'd better block out a good chunk of time blocked out to pay your "vacation tax." Brittle (one of the 10 GTD "holes" I identified) Smooth sailing. You've got some amount of buffer built in to your life. You can afford a few days of letting things pile up, and emptying is not usually a problem. Sustainable Couch potato/proactive monster. You have plenty of buffer. You can take off a week or two, say, and catch up with no sweat. Coasting

That's according to research firm Basex, which chose "information overload" as its 2008 "Problem of the Year." Failure to solve the problem will lead to "reduced productivity and throttled innovation."

The Atlantic ran a lengthy piece on the false promise of multitasking in its November edition (subscribers only), using as one of its epigraphs a line by Publilius Syrus: "To do two things at once is to do neither."

In a 2007 Pew survey, 49 percent of Americans described themselves as having "few tech assets" and said that constant connectivity was an annoyance, not a liberation.

1) The History of Information Overload One thing I discovered was that our current situation may not be that unique. Some interesting research (see the bibliography at the end of this post for the articles in the Journal of the History of Ideas) points out that since the 1200’s – but more particularly after the implementation of Gutenberg’s printing press – people have been complaining about information overload.

One thing I discovered was that our current situation may not be that unique. Some interesting research (see the bibliography at the end of this post for the articles in the Journal of the History of Ideas) points out that since the 1200’s – but more particularly after the implementation of Gutenberg’s printing press – people have been complaining about information overload.

2) The Negative Impact of Information Overload They are numerous studies to suggest that information overload makes us dumber: Persons exposed to excessive amounts of information are less productive, prone to make bad decisions, and risk suffering serious stress-related diseases.