Stu Downes

has an interesting post about sleepwalking to data overload, with all the RSS feeds, email, phonecalls, face-to-face talking we are now entering an area where data overload becomes a fact. No, not could become a fact, it becomes a fact. When I look at myself, I have a massive amount of RSS feeds, now in Google reader, a blog, a daily job and sometimes a private live. Many mailboxes, many phone calls, lots of interesting things to read, lots of stuff to discuss. But how do I manage all these information sources? Really, I don’t know, it’s a day-by-day proces, priorities, etc…

1 thing I learned, start by tagging and categorization of your RSS feeds, now I use Yahoo Pipes to manage and filter my feeds and include them in Google Reader. All incoming mail is filtered and categorized. From my blog I get approximately 40-50 mails per day. First thing I did this year was create a new mailstore with rules and filters.
People call me all day with questions, I have to write down stuff, use OneNote and the Windows Vista yellow paper gadget. But, it is not enough. I have to invest a lot of time to manage all thos information sources, to structure them, to screen it and to prioritize it. I want to contribute to Wikis, reply to comments, add comments, etc…

1 thing I know for sure, it is possible to do, but not yet, not with the so called web 2.0 tools, it is too fragmentated, still it needs to much efford.

So, I agree with Stu,  we are accelerating to an enormous data overload. A former colleague called it Information Burnout as a joke, but no, it isn’t a joke anymore