Maybe 20 or 30 years ago no one really thought people have too much information. Everyone had access to printed books, magazines and newspapers, the radio and the television. People would go to work, do their job, come home and keep themselves informed and entertained. About 10 years ago things changed and people started being drowned in wanted and unwanted information. The Information Overload became possible with the widely spreading and easy accessibility of the Internet along with the new invention of more and more sophisticated gadgets like the cell-phone or the PDA. Now people got to the extent of trying to find ways to win the battle against the data excess. Even before this problem appeared one knew it was not possible to know everything and the so called age of information brought along good things and bad things that did not make the situation easier. Today the Information Overload became such a big issue that it affects as both on the personal plan as well as on the career plan. Everything from the five minutes chat with your friends to extremely elaborated researches is considered information. Thus one need to be able to set his or her priorities, to manage working time and personal time better, to make a hierarchy of the information. No matter if the information needed or wanted is for work or for one’s entertainment, the date should as much as possible be relevant, accurate, timely, complete and last but not least simple. In a world where for most of the people time is money, the last thing one wants to do is to read pages and pages of information just to discover it says nothing new. Knowledge Management and Personal Knowledge Management teach one that simple and straight when talking or writing is one of the ways to fight too much information. Some of the most important steps in winning the battle with information are deciding what is important both at a personal level as well as at the working place. Also planning the day and allocating time for different things one has or likes to do is a step toward taking control of the amount of information received. Everybody likes to be up to date with what is happening in the world, but one should try to be up to date with the information that really matters for his or her own life. It is up to the individual to take a stand and decide when enough information is enough. Taking control of the incoming stream of information is important for one’s working habits as well as one’s personal life. For example one can lessen the amount of information received and can better focus on a project if he or she stops reading emails the moment they are received or if the cell-phone remains unanswered for a longer period of time. Setting rules for you, like answering just the important emails or allocating yourself a time periods for doing things, are all part of the Knowledge Management program. However this does not mean one should turn into a machine and do only scheduled things and follow the rules as if one’s life depended on it. Leave time to detach yourself even for short periods of time from all the Information Overload and use Knowledge Management to your advantage.
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