I is for Information

As I write this I am sharing a link on Facebook, checking out a client’s portfolio on Flikr, and reading my husband’s review of a survey I created. I am also listening to the radio and sipping a cup of earl grey tea.

I am multi-tasking simply because I have easy access to extensive amounts of information.

I was reflecting on said access to information this weekend, when I was encountering streets and sidewalks around the University of Pennsylvania (near where I live) crowded  with parents and children tenuously navigating the transition from familiar family life to pseudo-independence. As I was cursing the inability of these parents to drive efficiently on city streets (must I really be that uptight?) it struck me how prepared these students must be. Surely they have:

• emailed/facebooked/texted their new roommates
• checked out Google Maps to get a street view of their new digs
• read reviews of all roach coaches in the new neighborhood

In short, they know what they're walking into.

For those of us who are entrepreneurs, we use the same tools to uncover the most information we can to be effective, prepared and profitable when it comes to our ventures. We gather market research, poll our constituents, network, learn how to create business plans and how to edit HTML.

And most of us do this by way of multi-tasking.

Unfortunately, multi-tasking is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Stanford just published this research brief on multi-tasking, saying chronic multi-taskers are “not able to filter out what's not relevant to their current goal.” We have access to so much information, but the way we access it actually impedes our ability to use it effectively.  

I suggest another layer exists here. Our chronic reliance on external data – our research, reading, talking, connecting – is the largest impediment to our ability to identify the most essential information we have available to us: that which comes from the center of our very being. We have become so attuned to listening and synthesizing outside information that we cannot listen to ourselves.

It is my firm belief that the practice of listening to ourselves is foundational to the success of our enterprises. Not only can we then understand what it is we really want and really need, we can discern the essential steps to move us in that direction.

If you were to set aside space to really listen to yourself, what would that look like?

What would you hear?

Jennifer Gleeson Blue, through her company Get There From Here, is dedicated to equipping 20- and 30-somethings to create inspired, authentic and sustainable lives. In addition to individual coaching, she facilitates workshops, delivers presentations and helps organizations better leverage the assets of all generations. She is a member of the International Coach Federation and currently serves as Vice President of Communications for the Philadelphia Area Coaches Alliance. For more information, please visit www.getthere-fromhere.com.

Comments

[freelance writer]

...H for Help, E for Internet Explorer, V for vendetta...

[Jennifer Gleeson Blue]

Teresita -

Thanks so much for sharing your post and adding to the conversation. I especially appreciate your insights as to how multi-tasking erodes creativity and prevents us from deeply understanding complex problems. The science bears out that multi-tasking is a joke and ineffective; hopefully, we can adjust our modes of being to reflect that truth!

[Teresita Abay Krueger]

Jennifer, I enjoyed this entry, quite a bit, as I have blogged myself about the same issues- pls. see my wordpress entry on information overload, after I attended a talk at Murray Hill Institute http://www.murrayhillinstitute.org/html/past_events.html My net comments/observations were around "evidence of Attention Overload eroding creativity and the influence of multitasking. In today’s workplace it seems so much more effort is necessary, just to maintain status quo. Lagging self-discipline, an inability to increase focus, results in only accomplishing a “shallow” understanding of problems..."