Best Practices: Sarah Houghton-Jan on “Being Wired or Being Tired”

 

Infopeople instructor and Librarian in Black Sarah Houghton-Jan has hit another home run, and it would take someone like Sarah to pull this off.

In “Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload” (published online in the July 2008 issue of Ariadne), she produces a journal-length article of more than 6,000 words for those of us who don’t have enough time to do everything we want to do. The piece ends with 16 references for those wanting more information. And she manages to entice us into making the time to read the entire piece.

“I am still here, I am still alive, and my brain has yet to explode, so somehow I must be finding a way to make it work,” she writes at the beginning of the article, and we’re with her all the way from her brief history of information overload, through the techniques for managing overload, to her conclusion that “as information professionals, we are best equipped to recognize information overload and deal with its effects.”

There is lots of common sense here: filtering the information we receive; controlling rather than being controlled by incoming email; not feeling compelled to answer every phone call or instant message as it comes in; and having no hesitation about turning off a cell phone when interruptions will interfere with our ability to complete important tasks or be attentive during meetings.

We also find some uncommon yet easy-to-implement suggestions here for those of us congenitally afraid of cutting ourselves off from any information source: “Cancel subscriptions to periodicals you rarely read. If you do not get to read the Sunday paper until the following Saturday, that is a clear sign that you need less information,” she counsels in a section on print media overload techniques.

Nearing the end of the article, she takes us to the heart of the matter in a paragraph on balancing life and work: “If you find yourself tapping at a keyboard next to your partner on the sofa while you are watching a movie, instead of sidling up next to him or her, you may have a work/life balance problem…”

“Being Wired” is obviously resonating with readers: Sarah is receiving quite a few queries from those interested in having her speak to their groups on the topic. Which, we can only assume, is adding to her own overload while she is helping us reduce our own.

This item was originally posted on September 26,  2008 on Infoblog at http://infoblog.infopeople.org.

Training, the Intersection, Fear, and Success (4th of 4)

 

“I’m afraid” has to be one of the most common and dangerous phrases a teacher-trainer or student-learner can utter or hear. Fear leads to stress, stress shuts down the functioning of the neocortex, and learning becomes severely constrained or completely impossible.

Fear also severely limits creativity, as Frans Johansson writes in The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, & Culture, and we all know what happens in a classroom or workshop setting when creativity is not present: the only thing keeping us awake is the sound of our colleagues snoring.

Johansson spends considerable time in The Medici Effect explaining that the best ideas and experiences to emerge from the Intersection, that meeting of people from different fields of study or walks of life, come from taking risks and overcoming fear of failure. He cites studies and examples which confirm what many of us already suspect: that success requires multiple attempts and the willingness to actually fail so that lessons can be learned from failures.
One payoff to decreasing the fear of failure, he suggests, is that as the sense of danger decreases—physical danger or the much less serious danger of looking bad because of failure—people take more risks and therefore increase their chances of achieving even more innovation and success. Which sounds to me like a perfect breeding ground for first-rate learning which helps us and our students contribute more in our workplace and the larger community in which we live.

If we try a risky lesson plan or technique which takes us into the Intersection with those whom we are teaching or training, we become more effective. We have and share that magnificent jolt which actually makes us crave even more Intersectional experiences. And, if we are lucky, we have planted important seeds. We, and those we teach or train, become engaged. Excited. Collaborative. Associative. We are inspired and, in turn, inspirational. Which leaves us with a final question: is there any reason to let fear deprive us and our students of these potential training successes? Having read and thought about The Medici Effect, I fear not.

This item was originally posted on November 29, 2007 on Infoblog at http://infoblog.infopeople.org.