Traditionally, TMI was a TLA (three letter acronym) for “Too Much Information”. It was historically used as a joke term when someone went too far in describing a personal situation or problem that was off color or too detailed.
In practicality, it was a simple moniker for information overload. This is something we of the computer age are dealing with everyday. Since the growth of computing infrastructure in business, government and the home, we have seen large industries evolve to manage the TMI problem. We have seen post-facto solutions such as Google search to simplify the ability to find things. While definitely progress, it is still rather primitive relatively speaking.
The trouble is the challenge is growing exponentially. I believe the definition of TMI today refers to both “Too Much Information” and “Too Many Inputs”. We have moved from newspapers and broadcast media, to the early web of AOL and Yahoo, to over 1 billion websites and blogs.
A simple scan of my computing environment reveals that I have RSS feeds, meme sites, news sites, IM, email, and voice communications that I access from my computer and my mobile device. I have Yahoo IM, Skype, AIM and 6 different email addresses. Now I have multiple social networks to manage including Facebook and LinkedIn. In the work environment, I commonly have 4 or 5 applications running at any time. I usually access multiple websites and services via the web.
The resulting chaos is a real productivity killer. In thinking this through, the compounding problem seems strangely similar to Metcalf’s law. Metcalf hypothesized that the power of the network is equivalent to the square of the number of computers connected to it (Note: there is some controversy as to the validity of this concept). In the context of TMI, I propose that the amount of overload from TMI is the square of the number of inputs associated with a single user. I represent this as follows:
Chaos = (Inputs + Devices)2
• With “Inputs” referring to applications, websites, email accounts, chat, RSS etc.
• With “Devices” referring to PCs, Laptops, Mobile Phones, Kindles etc.
In my case, my Chaos score is (at least) 3844
In contrast, my father’s Chaos score is 36
We at GroupSwim think deeply about Chaos and its resulting impact on the work environment. We believe that thriving in Chaos is ultimately a requirement for success in the modern workplace. Pragmatically, we see that Chaos in the workplace is here to stay. We believe a team or an organization can be smart about controlling the level of Chaos by controlling the inputs and improving the quality of the inputs that remain. With the GroupSwim collaboration environment, our goal is to reduce the inputs and improve the quality for a team or organization while delivering all the access to information they need to be successful at their task at hand.
So, the real question is; what is your Chaos score?
Tags: Metcalfslaw, TMI
