HMI?

For those of you who are not aware one of my pursuits is research, in fact I work in a small research group here in West Virginia, I am also a Committed Sardine. In a recent post Ian talked about a research study into how much data we as American consume on a daily basis. In his peice Ian also shared this chart:

I was intruged enough buy the article to venture out to this link: http://hmi.ucsd.edu/howmuchinfo_research_report_consum.php and obtain a copy of the study to read. In the execuitve summary the researchers state:

In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day.

That is a lot of data folks. I hope you noticed that an average person consumes 34 gig of data a day and that the study does not include what they consume while at work! I once heard a history professor say that the averge person alive today is exposed to more information in a weekday copy of the New York Times than a person in the middle ages was in their entire lifetime. As I read this study the question that floats to the top of my head is, how much information is too much information.

It is no wonder that people feel overwhelmed by events. It becomes more and more important to focus on what is important to you and not what the rest of the world considers important. a few months back I did just that. I pulled back from all of the blogs and various data sources I was reviewing on a daily basis. At work I simple stopped multi-tasking. Instead of juggling three and four things at one time I focused on each project separately and I discouraged interruptions from my co-workers.

I did this all as an experiment and fully expected that my productivity would go down. To my surprise and delight the opposite happened. My productivity went up, the number of interruptions in my office dropped in half and I was happier with my work. That may sound odd coming from a guy who used to expose the virtues of multitasking but it is the case. Slow down and focus yourself and you will get better results and more done.

So HMI is to much? You have to decided that. I do recommend that you read the study though and take particular note of the break downs of time spent on certain task by the average American.

Keep the shutters clickin'!

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