InfoYou: Assessing and Addressing Information Overload

A while ago, it dawned on me that I could never seem to read all the e-mail in my inbox, resist subscribing to just one more fascinating e-letter, or restrict the blogs syndicated to my feed reader to a realistic number. To make matters worse, in the physical world, I was always a week behind on the newspapers and don't ask how far behind on all those essential magazines and journals.

That's when I began seriously exploring information overload -- the sense of being overwhelmed, overstressed, and overtaken by onrushing streams of information.  I became so interested in the subject and so convinced of the need for practical ways to deal with the ever-expanding information universe that my company, Metaforix, embarked on a study of how people manage information and what practical steps they might take to deal with information overload.

The result is InfoYou, an instrument for assessing and addressing information overload. Using many people's responses, the InfoYou questionnaire is designed to generate a series of information management profiles that reflect distinct individual styles. Based on the profiles, InfoYou information tool kits will aid personal productivity through targeted suggestions for collecting, storing, retrieving, and sharing infomation.

We have just opened the InfoYou questionnaire to broad-based testing. It's online at www.surveymonkey.com/infoyou, where everyone interested in information overload is cordially invited to complete it. As a thank-you for completing the questionnaire, you'll be invited to download "Infomaven's Top Ten Free and Inexpensive Tools for Taming Information Overload Online" -- where you're certain to find one or more software gems to add to your webetoire.

In addition, you'll be invited to enter a drawing for a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate.

Most people find the InfoYou questionnaire enjoyable and are able to complete it in fifteen minutes or less, so we're hoping for a large response. (If you are interrupted while taking the questionnaire, you can click on the InfoYou link again and return to the point where you left off.)

I hope you'll complete the questionnaire yourself and pass the link along to any colleagues or friends who might also be interested. Thanks in advance for participating in our study.