Do the Emotional Needs of the Many Outweigh the Logical Needs of the Few?

I’ve been reading several recent blog posts and tweets — all touching on the idea that Information Overload is an emotional issue. And, of course, we both agree, and we wrote a blog post saying as much last Summer. Since that post was published, we have added many new Bscopes users and blog readers. So, while addressing the ideas raised in these recent posts, I will refer back to our original post.


Digging For Gold

I started digging through these blog posts and through the tweets. In them I find things that I both agree and disagree with, simultaneously (how illogical!) As a result, I became confused. Here… take a look:

The best way to deal with information overload is to realize that it’s an emotional problem. (R.S. Wurman )

— rubir (@rubir) January 29, 2012


Ok. Clearly I agree with the statement. But it’s a tease. It makes me feel better. But it isn’t practical. It isn’t actionable.

Finding An Actionable Nugget

Talk about a meta illustration of the entire overload process… I dug through the entire original article from 1997 by Fast Company writer Mark Fischetti quoting original TED chair Richard Saul Wurman. And there, in the final paragraphs is the real useful wheat. Found inside the haystack (to badly mix a metaphor):

The best way to deal with information overload is to realize that it’s not a mental or a physical problem, it’s an emotional problem. And the only way to overcome it is to “hold on to what really interests you and make connections from there,” says Wurman. “Connecting one interest to the next is how you teach yourself and others.

“It’s worthless to read something you’re not interested in, because you won’t remember it anyway. Nothing occurs during that experience that helps your insight and understanding. Once you realize this, you’ll free yourself from the guilt of not paying attention to most of the news and information that’s out there.”

Fine. Brad is Jewish and Steve is Catholic. So I don’t think either of us is really going to “free ourselves from the guilt”. But, aside from that I now have something that can be turned into practical advice.

The Bscopes methodology is clear. Separate wheat from chaff. Rank. Sort. Label. Read what is hot for you. Ignore what is not.

This leads directly back to why we built Bscopes. To implement exactly such a method. To automate a task that is nearly insurmountable when you try it manually. And to help you focus on your inner Vulcan.

Psychology? How About Terms Like “Empowerment”?

Comforting – Psychology behind digital information overload. Not overwhelmed… part of the revolution! wp.me/p25u9C-nf via @pandodaily — Sandy Glickman (@sandyglickman) January 23, 2012

she points to this Brian Solis blog article:

The challenge lies not in the realization that we are empowered to curate our social streams and relationships, but in the consciousness of what is and what could be. Meaning, that we must first understand that how we’re connecting, consuming, and creating today is either part of the problem or part of the solution. We, and only we, are in control of information overload and everything begins with acceptance. … Information overload is a real phenomenon, but it is I believe, by design. It either works for us or against us and it is our choice as to which way the stream flows.

Brian gets some of it right. He describes the problem and the emotional impact. He describes some folks attempts to treat it like an addiction and go cold turkey. He describes some folks attempts to treat it like a diet. He even regurgitates Clay Shirkey’s “Filter Failure” quote. What Brian doesn’t do is offer any practical advice. He says it is up to us. But he neither tells you how to cope with the emotion nor how to manage the actual information.

If Brian were a psychologist, he’d likely be the kind that tells the addict “you just have to try harder”. Or care less.

He leads you right to the edge. He points the way to the promised land. But people need a map. They need a guide. They need tools.

Begging For A Guide

Look at these tweets:

@anib it is more information overload leading to emotion overload. A week off leads to introspecton. — Yvette Wray (@magependragon) January 23, 2012

and

Calm down, information overload is a good thing bit.ly/ySCAbT via @simplyzesty #socialmedia #li #yam — Dick Foster (@Dick_Foster) January 22, 2012

More Psychological Cliches

Yvette can only cope by periodic by periodic withdrawal. And Dick’s tweet telling people to calm down points to this article by @laurenfisher. She, like others, deals with emotions, telling everyone to “calm down”. As if just being told to stay calm can stave off the emotions and panic.

And again tries to make information overload into a disease. In this case, calling it “social media fatigue”.

While there may be some evidence to suggest social media fatigue – a result of information overload – is a real thing, these results seem questionable.

Fatigue, of course, leads to burnout. She falls back on the, everyone has been overloaded ever since they invented the printing press cliche. Get over it, she says, You’ll just need to develop better skills. And perhaps loose that appendix and grow a third eye while you are at it:

The problem is in the very term ‘overload’. It is not overload of information at all, but simply more information circulating around that we have to navigate through. And with this comes a new set of skills that we are increasingly adept at developing. Of course, more information is going to lead to more material for us to sift through, which can seem an arduous task. But these are the skills of modern society that are increasingly required to succeed. It’s not so much about what knowledge you happen to contain in your head, but how quickly you can sift through and navigate to that information that you need. Information overload is not new and it is not bad. It is a necessary condition of the advancement of society and equal access to knowledge.

As if “more information” and “overload of information” weren’t obviously two connected points on a continuum.

Worst of all, she doesn’t actually tell you how to quickly sift and navigate. She says it’s an essential skill of modern society. Did I miss where they taught it in High School or College?

She doesn’t offer any tools. She hasn’t built any, nor does she have some you could buy or rent. It’s as if our ancestors had determined that they needed to farm more and more land to survive, but no one had built a plow and no one was talking about hooking up oxen.

Now I Need A Break

And I’m not alone here…

The problem with information overload is not that there’s so much to know. It’s that there’s so much more that I think I *should* know… — Melonie Fullick (@qui_oui) January 20, 2012

and

@hoodiesnheels @iamproverbs @HeatherLLove whoa whoa information overload LOL okay *breathe* lol

— Jenelle Thompson (@jenellethemodel) January 23, 2012

Clearly @qui_oui and @jenellethemodel are feeling stressed. Having an emotional response to this illogical problem. In fact, in a Digital Brand Marketing blog post, Bill Corbett Jr. is writing about the stress caused by Information Overload:

Information overload is a form of stress.

That Tweet dream Sunday I reached the breaking point where I needed to make a commitment to myself and my family.  I suggest you consider making this same commitment to yourself and your family – disconnect and go off the grid. For many this will be very difficult to do.  For me, after my recent “Tweet dream” I am making the commitment to go off the grid not just once but periodically.

I can report that I am slowly attacking my “addiction” to being connected.  I have been able to take several full days off the grid and I am looking for a vacation spot where I will have no option.

Bill can do nothing but try and do a cold-turkey detox. Incredibly radical. Others have written about declaring RSS bankruptcy.

He isn’t dealing with or mastering the emotion. Working through it. There’s no solutions. No tools. None of them are dealing with it. And taking a vacation and thinking the problem will not be there when you get back. Well, that’s Einstein’s definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

These Folks Need a Guru

Someone to tell the to breathe. To take a vacation. But more than that. Someone to help them live day in and day out and cope with their overload.

But now I feel the need to warn them, warn all of you. That as in many industries, there are a lot of people out there peddling an answer. Some are legitimate. But others… well, they are somewhere between consultants, doctors and snake-oil peddlers of old.

I’m going to need to write another blog post just to try and separate out the characteristics of the ones that can help from the ones that only want to sell you something.

What To Do

Be logical. No one, not even Bscopes, has a magic bullet. But you can look for tools to empower you. To make you more able to find what you love or need and ignore the rest. And when you find those tools, share them with the rest of the world.

Bscopes Offers Services

We are branching out! We want to let other folks take advantage of some of the things we’ve learned building Bscopes. We have learned an amazing amount about cutting edge web technologies in the past few years. Plus we’ve created a few specific pieces of specialized software as part of Bscopes that we think might be useful to others as well. We have been asked to supply this knowledge to other folks.

As a result, we’ve created a new set of new services that we are offering:

  • Website Optimization -  Increase your site’s load and response times by 2, 5 or 10x.
  • Advanced WordPress Customization – a sophisticated web presence tied to a content management system
  • Automated Social Media – leverage technology to promote your content across multiple sites automatically
For more details, check out the services page or contact us.

 

 

Strategic Planning is For The Birds

Powerful bird watching us

Kicking off our regular all-day Friday marathon working session with the usual coffee at Starbucks.

As we left, we were greeted by this large raptor in a nearby tree. We assume he’s yet another RSS Power User scanning separate wheat from chaff. Or mice from rats.

Anyone who knows exactly what type of bird this is, please leave a comment below.

– Steve and Brad

We Kicked Google To the Curb

Kicked To The Curb

Bye Bye AdSense

Ok, not all of Google. Just AdSense ads. There is still lots to love about Google. Including Google Reader and our additional integration to it.

But Google AdSense is gone. Even on the free Bscopes plans.

We Should Have Listened

Copyblogger was right! We’ve read their pages for years now. A while back, Johnny B. Truant wrote that there are better ways to make money than AdSense. But we didn’t believe him. We do now.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

The real-estate on Bscopes is just too valuable. The pages seemed just too crowded. We’ve heard this from a number of folks looking at the site. And we just keep debating it back and forth. So now it’s gone.

Freemium Model

The idea was that the ads would supplement the paid subscriptions. And we knew that the click through rate on Google Ads is low. Not 1% low, not even 0.1% low. But, over the last couple of years the rate, for us, has dropped through the floor. Frankly, the ads weren’t bringing in revenue. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Bupkis.

Steve finally left the dark side. He’s got a new lightsaber and is willing to admit that the space could be put to better use.

TANSTAAFL

Now it is all up to you all buying Bscopes subscriptions. We need to pay our mortgage and buy some food and one of us still has kids to send to college.

Tell your friends. Click on the Subscribe button today. Don’t delay. While supplies last. Operators are standing by. (Ok, they aren’t but I’ve wanted to say that for a while now.)

Support Information Overload Awareness Day

Information Overload Awareness Day
Today is the third annual Information Overload Awareness Day.

This, of course, is what Bscopes is all about. And so we certainly want to throw our support behind this effort.

Tools Exist

The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that people seem to passively accept the fact that the noise grows worse over time. There’s no recognition that we can fight the trend. Only a sense of inevitability. Of the idea that we’ll never find the wheat we need under all the chaff floating around. But it is not true.

Lots of People Are Working On This

Here’s a quick list of some of the others who are talking about this today:

What To Do

  1. Tell your friends that there is hope. Point them to the tools and articles.
  2. Encourage people to sign up for Bscopes. Help them reduce their feeling of overload.
  3. Check out our blog page on Surviving Information Overload
  4. Tell us about your overload. And tell us what you are doing to solve it.

New Social Sharing Features Released

We just added the ability to share any (and all) Bscopes heatmaps with your friends. You can tweet them, “like” them on Facebook, +1 them on Google or share them on StumbleUpon.

We encourage you to share Bscopes with everyone you know.

Bookmark Your Personal Heatmap

My Heatmap

My Heatmap

Many users have asked “How can I bookmark my heatmap, so I can easily come back to it and so I can send it to other folks?” We’ve now made it possible to do that. Through the magic of the Apache Web Server and a little elbow grease (ok, maybe a lot of elbow grease and a decent sized wrench) we got it done.

The latest Bscopes release that gave you your own Personal Heatmap includes the ability to Bookmark that Heatmap.

Your Bscopes heatmap can be easily found by using the string “user” and your User (login) Name to the Bscopes URL in the pattern: http://www.bscopes.com/user/loginname.  As a demonstration, we created a heatmap specifically to collect blogs about Information Overload in a user with that login name. The Heatmap is at http://www.bscopes.com/user/InformationOverload.

This makes it possible for you to include a link to your own personal heatmap page on Bscopes.

We believe that the ability to bookmark your heatmap, leaving comments on other user’s heatmaps, and Gravatar support are a very important part of how we envision the Bscopes community working.

Give it a try. Look at the  Information Overload page. Check out the heat, and while you are there, leave us a comment!

Gravatars Make Sense for Bscopes Heatmaps

Main Gravatar IconNow that we offer Personal Heatmaps, it makes sense to show the Bscopes community who you are and a bit about yourself. But, in keeping with our philosophy, we don’t want to become another source of overload. So rather than having to set up yet another social profile, we are using Gravatars. The way we see it, you shouldn’t have to create a new profile for EVERY site you use!

The best place to see this feature in action on Bscopes is in the comments on each person’s Personal Heatmap. For example, we recently welcomed new Bscopes user Nancy Scott . Nancy created her own Personal Heatmap at http://www.bscopes.com/user/nancyscott/. The comment we left there shows the picture for our joint Gravatar.

If you don’t already have a Gravatar, you can set one up in about a minute. Just head over to http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup/ and follow the few, simple, steps. Of course, Gravatar has a very cool blog as well……….

So from now on,  you can leave comments on any and all of the Bscopes Heatmaps and everyone will be able to know who you are and what you are about.

Plus, you can leave a comment here on the Bscopes blog — where, of course, we also support Gravatars, as we naturally would ;)

 

 

How Many Kinds of Overload? Let Me Count The Ways

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning from wikipedia

Infinity Symbol

Infinity by doug88888, on Flickr

Blog/RSS Overload

We’ve written a lot about overload. Most of the time at Bscopes we are addressing the problem of trying to read too many blogs and websites. It’s our position that we’ve addressed the most common issues in our secret sauce with the Bscopes Heatmap as a tool to survive it.

Now into the second decade of the 21st century (does that make you feel old?), people are discussing a number of different sources that make them feel overloaded.

Other Kinds

Here’s a list of the Top 5 other overload sources that we see:

1. News Overload:

Some folks are news junkies. They want (need) to consume the latest news. Despite the death of “old” media like newspapers, there is more news than ever before. And tons of sources. And almost as many content aggregators — from google news to vertical niche aggregators like Techmeme. The Bscopes secret  sauce uses frequency and update interval to account for news feeds that spew content into our space.

2. Internet Marketing Overload:

If you google “overload” and look at blogs and websites, this discussion is everywhere. Apparently not only do marketers talk (and sell and market) but they talk to each other. So much so that anyone trying to learn about using the Internet for marketing seems to get overloaded very quickly. This is best controlled with a simple filter and put into its place.

3. Social Network Overload:

This is a newer form of overload. Robert Scoble seems to find the limits of each new social networking site out there. People have been complaining for a while about Facebook Overload and how they can’t keep up with the river of information in their Twitter stream. Now, within weeks of Google+ being opened up to users, people like Alexander McNabb are now complaining about how that is making them overloaded.

Google+ has finally pitched me into information overload. I’m dealing with too many streams of information and it’s becoming uncomfortable. I know I’m an unusually ‘connnected’ person: quite apart from the Twitter, Facebook, Blogger triangle, I handle reasonably large volumes of email and follow a lot of blogs and sites. I’m rarely truly offline. It’s one reason I find it funny when my bank tells me they tried to get in touch with me but couldn’t. I mean, there are people who actively try to avoid me and find it hard. It got so bad that when we returned from getting stuck under the Tikkipukkapokka, or whatever it was called, Icelandic ash cloud, I actually gave interviews to media amused that I had been caught offline in a totally analogue rural lighthouse.

 

We took special care to account for social streams in Bscopes Heatmaps. They are important but only in a temporal fashion. That is a text message or Tweet is HOT at the point it is written and does not typically have a lasting value. Nor does it have any value outside of the author and its recipient.

 

4. Conversation Overload:

I’d say this is superset of Social Network Overload. Certainly conversations occur there. They also occur via e-mail. And by Text Message. And even good, old, voice-mail tag. Folks like Tom Foremski complain about interpersonal aspect of this kind of overload:

As a journalist I have trouble keeping up with the conversations in my email, yet today I have conversations everywhere and in new places. There’s email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, my two blogs, then there are SMS messages, voicemail (which I never check) and the latest is: Google Plus.

The problem with conversations is that they are more important than not reading that great article… Conversations are with people that I work with, that I meet at conferences and events, potential business partners, friends, family, readers, supporters, and more. I want these conversations because I respect these people.

But I don’t want it to seem that I’m ignoring people or that I’m arrogant in some way, but I have to admit this — I can’t keep up! And I bet many others can’t keep up too.

I don’t know how many others. I once felt this way when I had a very different kind of job. But now, as a software developer with only one business partner, tools like GTD allow me to manage this well enough. But then again, I only follow two dozen people on twitter. And I let my wife tell me if I miss anything on Facebook. So maybe I’m not overloaded only by not participating. Or by being an anti-social nerd. ;)

5. Cuteness Overload:

Ok. No so much the same kind of overload, Cuteness Overload still ranks very high if you search google for the word “overload”. And I certainly can get overloaded on cuteness almost instantly. Heck, I’m overloaded after even one picture of LOLCats. But, then again, I’m notably snarky.

Different? The Same?

Are these kinds of overload the same as what we’ve been discussing here on the Bscopes blog? Or are each of them fundamentally different? I can certainly see some similarities. Most importantly I think they all have the same effect on each of us. It provokes an emotional reaction. It triggers our fight or flight response and ups those stress hormones that are already too high in most of us.

What I’m not yet convinced of is if you can use the same tools to assist in each different kind of overload or if you need different tools for each job.

What This Means

I think it’s kind of a “straw that breaks the camel’s back” kind of issue. Any one of these is bad enough. But when you add each new fire hose of stuff coming at you… Well, it becomes overwhelming.

What Do You Do About It?

For some folks it is ostrich mode. You just bury your head and forget about it. You hope it goes away. For those folks, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

Some folks, like Kristi Hines, give out advice on how to get organized: she makes lists on Twitter and Facebook. She trims down her use of Stumbleupon. She’s a pro at Gmail lablels. She puts her RSS feeds into folders.

Techniques like that will take you far. For some folks you can even get far enough. For others, eventually the volume increases and the overload returns.

What Do You Want?

I won’t pretend to know all the answers here. But we are curious. Bscopes has focused so far on Blog Overload and helping to manage website URLs and RSS feeds.

Since you’re a Bscopes fanatic and have thoroughly digested the Heatmap technology, the question now is what else, if anything, should we include in Bscopes?

As always, your opinions are wanted. Leave a comment below.

Bronze Membership Level — Unlimited Feeds

Bronze Now, Silver and Gold Later

 

We’re announcing the availability of Bscopes Bronze. This is a new paid membership level for those users with an appetite for more feeds. A lot more feeds!

Here’s what  a Bronze membership offers:

  • Unlimited Feeds (well 50,000. If anyone gets to that point then we’ll give you more. And yes, size matters ;)
  • No Advertisements (yay!) — ’cause if you pay to subscribe then we have a business model and we don’t need no stinkin’ ads (nor badges).
  • Private Heatmap — ’cause some folks don’t share well with others
  • Google Reader Import — so you don’t have to type in all your feeds again, and again, and again…

Plus, we have decided to keep the wildly popular policy of a free trial. When you purchase the Bronze membership, you get the first 30 days FREE. (So this is more like free beer than free speech.)

So go ahead, give it a shot. Or, perhaps you really aren’t as overloaded as you feel, if you can’t find enough feeds to put into a Heatmap.

The Bscopes Team