Sunday, July 25, 2010

Information and Task overload

IFS? TFS?

Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS) is a term not that long ago introduced in medical literature. "Information overload" according to Wikipedia is a term popularized by Alvin Toffler that refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information.

But what about "Task overload"? Most of us u often find ourself doing several things at the same time, anything from sitting in a meeting while typing an "ever-so-urgent" email, writing the "need it by this evening" report and reading the "have to know" latest online news article. It's fashionably called multitasking or the ability to handle an amount of tasks simultaneously. In reality it leaves most of us by the end of each day burnt out and exhausted. What about calling it Task Fatigue Syndrome (TFS)? Overstress, another fairly new word in the dictionary, results apparently from two factors: work overload and change and affects 10% of the population in the industrial world!!

What if we could somehow tackle both nasties at the same time? What if you could become immensely organised? What if this could be your natural state? Watch the Portal of Minds website in a couple of days. I promise I will make it worth your while!

Yours - Noël




Friday, July 23, 2010

How information visualisation can help you in all aspects of your life!

I’m Noël Van Herreweghe, trainer, coach and advisor with a great interest in information visualization, and a broad range of related topics as diverse as visualisation methods and tools, the way humans solve problems through visualisation, the way we use visualisation in daily life, remember or forget, pay attention to things, the relationship with brain and mind etc..
The Portal of Minds website, this Blog and the Twitter comments intend to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in these subjects.  
Material covered will include news, tips, announcements, resources, case studies, answers to your questions, and other subject matter.
Watch this space within the next couple of days!
Yours - Noël