Information Overload
Less is more!
In the complex World that we live in things haven’t worked out quite as many thought a couple of decades ago; the personal or home computer was going to make our lives considerably easier taking on the mundane and repetitive tasks. The idea of being able to do things for yourself, like online check in for travelling, seems great and avoids any delays.
However, is this really the case?
The World has got a lot more complex for us as a result of all this; we now have an increasing number of tasks to complete:-
- online banking need to pay a bill
- respond to a WhatsApp/text message
- received an email that looks interesting I will have a look
- what time is the online shopping delivery?
- anything happening on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat
Thats just the last five minutes! More information and its availability may in fact becoming counter productive for us and taking our minds away from the task in hand. All the above things can be interesting and useful but also help the firms behind them; think online check in for travel – no need to employ someone to do that anymore we even pay for the ink for the company if we need to print off our boarding pass.
What about Social Media? Revenues for companies in this sector are driven by advertising, a lot of which is targeted based on your recent internet search history; and if something does catch your attention and you make a purchase this is completed online – no need to employ a shop assistant for that one.
Ok not all of this is bad but it does affect our concentration and lead us to spend more time multi-tasking leading to information overload, decision fatigue and forgetfulness. There have been plenty of studies that suggest there is a limit to how much information can be absorbed and effectively utilised.
In Daniel Levitin’s book the Organised Mind he looks at how optimum performance and decision making requires only 10-12 pieces of information and this extends to consumers who will...
have finite limits for how much information they can absorb and process within a given period of time. Lets call it the load effect. In fact this has been shown consumers make poor choices with more information.
(The Organized Mind p310)
This tendency for information overload is prevalent across all industries now and perhaps Financial Services is one of the worst; over the coming months we will be focusing on providing information that is relevant and effective, hopefully allowing you to see in a more concise manner your current financial position.