Comment: Better management not less information

Office desks can be overloaded with communication mediums

We live in an increasingly fast-paced world, so dealing with communications as quickly as possible is paramount to running an effective business. But this demand is threatening to drown us all in a communication overload.

On a daily basis, most workers have to deal with colleagues and usually two or more other groups of people, be they customers, clients, vendors, salespeople or, as in my case, PRs and readers.

Just the sheer number of ways we communicate these days is simply stunning. On my desk is a work mobile and personal mobile as well as my landline, while my PC (and my mobiles to a lesser degree) run two separate email accounts, three instant messaging clients as well as Twitter and Facebook. And let's not forget about colleagues wandering over, good old-fashioned letters and the odd fax that tips up from time to time.

What that amounts to is that 10 minutes can't go by without something chiming or flashing in a bid for my attention. The problem becomes trying to filter these between what is time sensitive and what can wait, but in most cases that is impossible to do without stopping what you are busy doing and checking the message first.

Unfortunately these are all worthwhile and necessary forms of communication for me, so trying to limit these is not an option. While I may be something of an extreme case in terms of the number of communication channels I use, many people face much the same problem every day and it's only likely to get worse in the future.

Even being out of the office is no longer an excuse to be incommunicado thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones and the recent growth of mobile data access.

So the question becomes: How do we deal with this communication overload? If we can't not use them and we can't ignore them, then how do we try and still get anything done? Sadly at the moment the answer seems to be "you can't", or at least there is no simple and easy way of doing it today.

Thankfully, that's not the end of the story and we're not doomed to a life of ceaseless communication. There are a number of emerging technologies trying to tackle this very issue with unified communications leading that charge.

When applied correctly, unified communications is as much about helping people get in contact with the best person, at the best time and through the best medium.

We are already starting to see the convergence of some of these channels which can be a good starting point. Smartphones can now cope with calls, text messages, email and instant messaging, and there are a growing number of unified communications systems popping up which add the vital element of presence.

Already popular in instant messaging, presence provides a key aspect to helping cope with the barrage of messages, letting others know if you're available, in a meeting, unavailable or out to lunch. This type of indicator can help people decide whether to call you now or later or perhaps just drop you an email, while allowing you to still be contacted when something critical arises.

So unfortunately, until presence and unified communications become more widespread we're stuck relying on common sense and discipline.

There are a host of different tricks and techniques that we can use to help better manage the flow of information within our daily lives, but while time management courses are now commonplace, communication management courses are not.

Even things like setting the email or Twitter client to only check for new messages every 10 minutes instead of two can make a significant difference.

Personally, I find it helps to periodically remind myself that almost nothing is so important that it can't wait five minutes while I maintain my train of thought and complete…

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