05/ 31/ 2005
by Reid Goldsborough
It's unavoidable. Living in post-industrial 21st century society means being surrounded by the accouterments of information technology. It's there in our offices, in our cars and in our homes – and it’s overwhelming.
One-third of us don't deal well with technology, according to the research of Larry Rosen, psychology professor and author of "TechnoStress: Coping With Technology @Work @Home @Play" (Wiley; October 17, 1997; $22.95/Cloth). Rosen is the Paul Revere of the Information Age, warning us about the principle downside of silicon and software, which he calls "technostress."
The relentless march of technology can overwhelm anyone, says Rosen, who's a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and company meetings about the impact of digital technology on our psyches.
"You don't have to do it all," he said in a phone interview. "You have the right to make choices. Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
On the other hand, don't go to the opposite extreme of trying to do everything at once. Trying to do too many things at once can put you in a bind.
The theme is prioritizing, the placing of human constraints of your own devising on the technology. Prioritizing carries over into your personal life too. Use the following tips to keep your technology under control:
- Create filters in your e-mail program. You can eliminate many irrelevant messages and have urgent messages from important people flagged for your attention.
- Learn the advanced search procedures for the Web search tool you use. You can eliminate many irrelevant sites and hone in more quickly on the information you're after.
- Stop yourself from clicking on intriguing but irrelevant links when doing research on the Web.
- Manage e-mail conversations by selectively responding to messages and by matching the length of your response to how eager you are to continue conversing.
- Finally, stop yourself from adding to the technostress of others. Keep your e-mail messages to one screen if possible and use an informative subject line. If you expect a lot of back-and-forth communication, forgo e-mail completely and pick up the phone – it will be a lot more efficient.
- With Web pages, put the most important information up front and break up pages with informative subheads so readers can get the gist of what you're saying with a quick scan. Use clear, concise language to communicate, not bureaucratese to impress.
Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com or http://www.netaxs.com/~reidgold/column.
