This article introduces the dark side and negative effect of information overload and its close cousin, attention fragmentation. It provides executives and their organizations tips to deal with information overload and attention fragmentation by reminding them of several points: First, multitasking is a terrible coping mechanism. A body of scientific evidence demonstrates fairly conclusively that multitasking makes human beings less productive, less creative and less able to make good decision, especially for those who want to be effective leaders. I agree with this opinion, and I think instead of multitasking, we should go with system optimizing, which means a reasonable plan of time, effort and procedure, and completing a task step by step, or several tasks one by one. But for something that can be done together that won't affect the result, we can still go multitasking. For example, we can cook the rice first, the cut the vegetables while we are waiting the the rice to be ready. So it's not absolute. Second, the author addresses that information overload requires enormous self-discipline, for example, senior executives must labor each day to keep themselves on track by applying timeless ye powerful guidelines: find time to focus, filter out the unimportant, forget about work every now and then. Though this article is mainly for executives and organizations, it also have practical implications on individuals and provides helpful experience for us.
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