How to Process Incoming Information - DBR 083

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

Most people don't know how to process incoming information. This is a core part of personal information management, which (particularly for knowledge workers) is absolutely critical for modern economic life. The ways in which we receive information are continuing to change. The amount of information and level of awareness that the business and general cultures expect of us are both increasing as well. In order to be successful with those, we need to have our information processing really working well. Here’s how to process incoming information well. Lots of people are trying this on their own, but it’s hard to be successful that way. If you want to talk to me about coaching, hit me on LinkedIn or [email protected] Let’s get into it. Incoming information and Information Channels: Definitions Information channels thought experiment: do you have a process for dealing with information channels? General ideas about channels

• Basic approach: open it, empty it, close it – ‘processing’
• Two basic types of information
• All channels are bad places to store both kinds of information
• All channels are bad places to do work
• Another storage location is REQUIRED

A few differences between channels

• Synchronous versus asynchronous
• Discrete versus continuous
• Digital versus analog
• Two-way versus ‘read only’ or ‘write only’
• Typical level of urgency

Examples

• Processing an e-mail channel (asynchronous, discrete, digital, two way)
• Processing a phone channel (synchronous)
• Processing a chat channel (continuous)
• Processing a conversation/meeting (analog)
• Processing a blog channel (one-way)

We’ve covered how to process email across several channels and we’ve covered the differences across the four properties of channels. You should be able to construct a basic process for each of your channels.