Signposts and waypoints

As we deal with increasing amounts and complexity of information, it’s worth remembering a golden rule: people may not be as interested in your stuff as you are. 

That means they won’t work too hard to process it, organize it or make sense of it. 

They’ve got other things on their mind, better things to do, little space to take more on. They’ve got even less capacity for poorly arranged information. 

During an online event recently, I was overwhelmed with the lack of structure in presentations. 

Overwhelmed because it became a dump of information, a series of points that were disconnected, unrelated and in no sequence, theme or logical order. 

Not everything can be important. We can’t take it all in, all at once. 

Just as we can’t complete a journey in one step, delivering information requires a step by step or chunk by chunk approach.

Waypoints and signposts can help. 

📌 Waypoints where you stop or pause along the way. 
➡️ Signposts that guide people along. 

Otherwise it’s just a dump. 

Track the patterns

Very few things happen in isolation or independence. They are most likely connected to something else. If there’s something else connected, what could you find out about it?

Look for clues ... and cues. As you gather up more information - CSI style - you’re sensemaking, connecting dots, gathering information on trends and patterns. And as soon as there are three of something, there is a pattern.

A pattern that is noticeable.

A pattern that is recognisable.

A pattern that is actionable.

What patterns are you noticing :

- with the members in your team?

- in your work and the projects you’re working on?

- with your customers and what their problems or concerns are?

Great leaders and thinkers are great pattern trackers and pattern matchers.

Even if it’s not all lined up in front of them.

Even if it doesn’t all happen at once.

Even if there is a period of time between pieces of the pattern.

Take note. Spot the pattern. Make sense. And better decisions and wiser choices will be yours. Did you spot the patterns in this post?

Summaries are super

In our overwhelm of information, meetings, emotions and the impact of change, to summarise ...is to care. We can’t possibly be listening as well as we might usually.

So don’t just finish your meeting, call or session. Make time to recap and summarise and bring it all together. Spend just a minute, or 3 or 5, summarising what happened, where we are at, what is next. 

It’s ok to repeat stuff. 

We don’t do it enough in ’normal times’, so it’s needed even more in these new normal times. As you bring things together, tying up lose ends for people, reminding and recapping, you’ll help them release some of the mental cognitive load they’ve been carrying.

You help do some of the sorting and storing work for them and their brain. It’s just a smart, leader-y thing to do. 

And it’s a caring thing to do, considering the emotional weights that can fill our mind. A synopsis, a digest ... a nutshell. 

Their brain will say ‘thank you’ even if they don’t. It’s a service most certainly worth the time and effort.

Choose : Curiosity or Fear

As we choose - and we do choose, we don’t have to go where someone or something else takes us - we can begin to think in ways that are helpful and at times, harmful.

We need fear: it keeps us alive. But how much do we need? How do you know when you’ve had enough? At what point is too much fear not good for us?

We have a strong, powerful curiosity bias, a tendency to take on information, to absorb and learn. At what point might we be taking on so much information on a topic that the curiosity ... becomes anxiety and fear? There can be a drive for more more more information: What’s the latest? Where is it at now? What’s happening where?

‘News’ outlets know we think like this. They feed our curiosity bias and they succeed when we can’t get enough of them and keep coming back for ‘more’.

But you don’t have to eat from the feeders.

You have choice: To learn and seek out information that becomes knowledge and insight and then to stop ... so it does not feed anxiety and fear.

Behave how the feeders want you to behave? Or lift up through to curiosity, to get some information and insight and then ... get on with your glorious life.

The cost of overwhelm

When it hits you, that information overload feeling, what do you do? Panic? Get a coffee? Look at your phone?

None of these are helpful.

The feeling of overload, that ‘full sponge’ feeling isn’t pleasant.

Disengagement, distraction and withdrawal are all behaviours connected with information overload.

We try to cope. How often do we nod to say we understand something or have the information in hand, but in reality we're scrambling to catch up, struggling to stay awake or fed up with feigning interest?

Could it be career limiting if we don’t appear smart, sharp and “all over it”, having all the information under our control?

Enough.

It’s time to call out when something doesn’t make sense or the pace, quantity or style of information is overwhelming us.

It’s most likely overwhelming others too. We have a responsibility as communicators of information to guard against information overload in ourselves, and creating overwhelm for others.

We don’t need to suffer. Cognitive load coping is very much a skill for today....and the future.