Strategies to Manage Information Overload

As the world produces more information daily than we can hope to digest, it has become increasingly important to manage and use that information to our benefit. Here are some strategies to help.

By Art Saffran

Most anyone in today's workplace would wearily agree that they suffer from information overload. Information keeps flowing in at a furious pace from email, faxes, letters, in office phone calls, cell phones and pagers, voice mail, meetings, interruptions, magazines, brochures, newsletters, and more. In fact, some people feel so overloaded that experts have identified a stress-induced illness called Information Fatigue Syndrome.

More information comes your way daily than ever before, and you have to find the relevant and often critical information from this deluge. Tracking, filing, and finding information quickly and easily is crucial in the legal field. Here are some strategies to help you manage your information overload and turn information from an enemy into an ally.

Time management

Determine what's important. Lawyers are busier than ever, and their to-do lists grow longer with urgent, deadline-driven tasks. But are these tasks your only important work? When the task list is long, it often is easy to focus on projects that are on a deadline and put off other equally important jobs. Creating a firm marketing plan, working on a new staff recruiting strategy, devising a technology plan, reviewing professional journals, and completing other similar tasks may be critical to the success of your law practice. Yet, they often are lost in the daily crush of work.

List your important goals, then schedule time each week to work on a few of them, tracking your progress. Spending some time on these goals may free up time to take advantage of all the information that comes your way.

Schedule time for projects. How often is your intention to work on projects derailed by interruptions and unscheduled events? Treat your work tasks as you would a client meeting. Block time on your calendar, close the door, turn off the phone, and focus on just the task at hand. As you reduce your to-do list and regain control over your time, you may be more able to deal with the uncontrollable events in your work life.

Schedule time to respond to email, faxes, and phone calls. Email seems to demand your immediate attention because messages come directly to your computer screen, bypassing all standard office barriers. Whether the email comes from your staff, colleagues, clients, or others, each message creates the expectation that you will drop everything and respond immediately.

Treat your email time in the same way you might manage faxes, phone calls, and letters. Plan daily times to respond to these sources of information overload. Each morning, review your planned tasks for the day. Then, listen to voice mail, and read your letters, faxes, and email. Decide when you need to respond to each communication and schedule time just for these tasks. Above all, don't let each email, phone call, or fax throw you off your planned day. This strategy will give you more time to respond to the incoming messages that are true emergencies.

Control your email lists. Lawyers who use email lists on the Internet may become inundated with messages. Subscribers to email lists can communicate with all other same-list subscribers by sending a single message to the list email address. Thousands of people with similar interests can subscribe to a list. Lists exist on thousands of topics and can be a source of valuable information from substantive legal issues to personal hobbies.

Email lists also generate a high volume of incoming email messages. Finding the important messages can be time consuming and stressful. Subscribe to several email lists and you may never see daylight.

Subscribe only to those email lists that offer high value to your law practice and personal interests. Try a list for a few days or weeks. If the volume of messages is too high or the quality of discussion is not helpful or relevant, simply unsubscribe. Subscribing and unsubscribing is as simple as sending an email message to the list manager. When you are out of town for business or vacation, consider unsubscribing from any busy email lists or you may be faced with several hours of email reading when you return.

Use the email list digest. Digests are a little-known feature of all email lists. A digest will deliver a daily or weekly compilation of all a list's messages in a single message. Each email list may have a different method of subscribing to the list digest; send a message to the list administrator to find out how to subscribe or change to a digest version of the list.

Use email folders. Your email program probably deposits all your messages into one central in-box. Look at the options of your email program and you may find it allows you to create folders to organize your messages. Move your messages to the proper folders, and it will be easier to find important email.

Use email rules. The "rules" feature of many email programs can help you organize incoming messages automatically. For example, you might create a rule that moves all mail from an email list to a folder for that list. Once the rule is active, all incoming messages from that list will be stored automatically in the proper folder, making review and retrieval that much easier.

Learn to use your tools. Most lawyers do not know how to use more than a few features of each technology tool at their fingertips, from word processing and legal research databases to Internet access. Effectively using the features available in the software you use every day will help you efficiently manage a high volume of information.

Buy books that explain the useful features of your computer software. Look for computer classes in your community. For legal research strategies, ask a law librarian for a lesson in electronic legal research.

Paper management

Clear the clutter. Stacks of paper and other paraphernalia on your desk make it difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. These stacks distract you from your work and create stress that interferes with clear thought.

Margaret Spencer, an expert in managing clutter, suggests trying the following approach to clear your desk: 1) set aside two to three uninterrupted hours for the task; 2) clear all the knickknacks and office supplies from your desktop. Put personal items on a shelf or credenza and the office supplies in your desk drawers; 3) sort the magazines, newsletters, brochures, and books on your desk. Create a "to read" shelf for those materials you will read, toss those you know you won't read; and 4) create project files - and use them. The first three items are self-explanatory. But for anyone trying to burrow out from under a severely paper-burdened desk, the following explains how to begin.

Create project files. Write "Projects" on a legal pad. Pick up one paper at a time from your desk and determine what project it is for. List each project, assign each a number, and include a short description of each project. Affix a Post-It® brand note with the project number on it to each piece of paper. Sort the paper by project number into piles on the floor. Repeat this process with each piece of paper and file folder on your desk until the top of your desk is clear. Finally, use your legal pad list to create file folders for all the projects - the project numbers and descriptions are the titles for your folder labels. File all the folders numerically and use your legal pad as an index for quickly locating all project-related files. Now that your desk is clear, keep only your current work file on it.

Use a personal scanner to reduce the amount of paper. Much of the information you need to review, store, and retrieve comes to you on paper in the form of articles, letters, newsletters, and notes. Managing this paper and finding the information when you need it can be daunting - a personal scanner can help.

Costing around $150, a personal scanner fits on the desk between your keyboard and computer. To scan information you just insert the paper and an electronic picture is created on your computer screen. This picture can be labeled for easy future retrieval, the text can be converted to a word processing file, and the image can be sent over the phone lines as a fax. When converting text to a word processing file, type in key words to make searching easy. One of the most popular personal scanners is the PaperPort from Visioneer (1-800-358-3298).

Use a personal information manager. Personal information manager (PIM) software lets you record, sort, and retrieve much of the miscellaneous information that comes your way. Some PIMs track notes, much like electronic Post-It notes. Others are more full-featured, offering calendars, phone call tracking, and address databases. A full-featured PIM, such as GoldMine from GoldMine Software (1-800-654-3526), lets you keep track of all your phone calls, miscellaneous information, and appointments. The Microsoft Office suite contains a PIM called Outlook included at no additional cost. Learning to use a PIM requires time, but the reward in time and energy saved in finding critical information can be enormous.

Create an intranet. An intranet is a Web site that is internal to your office. An intranet gives your office the same capabilities as a Web site on the Internet. Your intranet might include links to client profiles, form and brief banks, staff directories, personnel policy manuals, and links to Internet-based legal research Web sites. Intranets require networked computers, and getting one started may require some assistance. Once the intranet is in place, everyone in the office will have fast access to any information you choose to make available.

While these strategies might seem to create work for those suffering from information overload, trying one or two strategies just might be the first step in dealing with the growing challenge of managing information.

Wisconsin Lawyer