Coping with information overload

A Time Inc article suggests modern psychologists and neurologists have found more reasons why we dream. Using PET scans and MRI imaging they’ve discovered what our brain is trying to do - after a full day’s work of overwhelming meetings and information dumps.

While we’re asleep, dreaming is the brain’s way of deleting or ‘dumping excess data’. Our brain is kind of taking out the trash, but it’s also ‘consolidating important information’.

The categorizing, sorting and processing that's going on in dreaming is epic!

So how in our waking hours could we also DUMP the meaningless and CACHE the valuable stuff?

If we’re doing it automatically, unconsciously while we sleep, imagine if we did more of this while we're awake and working, collaborating and problem solving. Imagine our performance lift!

I’m not suggesting you nod off right now, trying to make sense of that meeting you were just in, but hey, some businesses do support power napping!

Rather, try using my 'CCC' technique:

- Categorize

- Consolidate and then

- Clear ... throughout the day. I

t's a much smarter way to work when overloaded. Why wait until bed time.

Could the discovery experience of travel, work at work

The promises and rewards of travel are many : exploration, discovery, insight, learning, life-changing experiences. We are invited to show up, not knowing much about a country or culture, encouraged to tour, learn, listen, sample, test and experience.

Could more leaders in more businesses encourage the joys of discovery at work, like travel does for us?

Are there fears that all that discovering will take/waste a lot of time?

That it won’t really deliver any benefits?

Or that it isn’t needed: at work we just do what we do, same as yesterday, last week or last year.

Newer ways of thinking and working include doing things like deliberate discovery. It’s invited, welcomed and expected. I’m not suggesting it switches to all, full-on discovery, 100% of the time. It’s not an all or nothing thing.

It’s about some. Allowing some time for discovery. Some budget. Some opportunity. Some guidance or coaching so that your team knows how to discover, explore and unearth.

Otherwise, one day you’ll wonder where all the good people went to, why they left. They’ll go where there are opportunities for a better ‘adventure’.

Do you A3

Working with teams, building their sensemaking and problem-solving skills, I’ll often ask them, ‘Do you A3?’

So ... do YOU A3?

🔲 Yes

🔲 No

🔲 Kind of

If yes, you’re an A3 thinking kind of person, you’d know how powerful this way of thinking and working is. It’s great for problem solving, communicating, collaborating, presenting and working. (And hey, share more of your thinking like this. Help others understand what is gained when you can see what’s going on).

If you’re a no, you can start now. I have a task for you below.

If you’re a 'kind of', is that because you’ve heard of it but don’t use it, or something else?

A3 thinking (using A3 sized paper) is a thing. With foundations from Toyota, lean manufacturing and the lean product development process great Al Ward, A3 pages are being created, prepared and shared around the world right now to communicate and make sense of some of the most challenging and complex things.

A task for you: get 1 piece of A3 paper and write on it, some of the things you’re currently working on. Keep the page this week, add to it, make notes. Share it with others, use it to explain stuff, see how it helps yours and other people’s thinking.

Don’t let the minimisers drag you down

You’ve information to share, a cool idea or suggestion for something. So you launch it out there into the meeting, the workshop, the room or the conversation. And it floats down softly over everyone, flip ... zip... zop ... like a leaf falling from a tree. 

Someone catches it, backing you up or validating you, reinforcing what you said. Good. Your contribution has been acknowledged.

But then it comes, the grey cloud (no it's snappier), the fly swatter (no it’s more powerful) ... the big boulder.

It’s a Slap. Down.

This is the minimiser, reducing what you said, deflating, downplaying, trivializing. Using criticism, dismissal, or patronizing techniques they be-little. So they can be-big.

When you’re leading a meeting you MUST tune in to this behaviour and moderate or mediate it. They may not realise they're doing it, the killjoys and party poopers.

Minimizing can be a habitual way of thinking, a way of seeing the world, pointing out problems, cautioning and keeping things as they are, under control. Don’t let it drag you down.

Gather the validators and supporters you heard from earlier and continue to advance your idea.

Illegitimi non carborundum

Could you do it in reverse

I collected the mail from my mailbox yesterday at 11am and saw the postal delivery worker, the ‘postie’, finishing delivering mail to other letterboxes.

Usually she delivers the mail to our area at about 3pm.

‘Hi!’ I said. ‘Hey you seem a bit earlier, a different time today?’

‘Yes', she said, 'I thought I’d do my round in reverse today; you know, keep it fresh.

She went on...'It’s easy to become a machine, doing the same thing, same way, same route, riding up streets the same direction, the same order and same views. But wow, this has really snapped me out of things today; I’ve had to think and not just go by habit.'

She delivered the mail and a great insight.

What’s the current way you do something? And how could you reverse it? Even a small part of it? Go try.

Creativity and novel thinking data suggests this helps us see new things, make new connections, make sense in other ways.

Most of all, it changes our locked-in perspective.