Might As Well Face It: Dealing with Information Addiction

by Michael VanDervort on 03/13/2010 02:43 0 comments , 385 views
Categories: Social HR, Management & Policy, Talent Management

My Addiction

From Drop Box

With apologies to Robert Palmer….

Your lights are on, but you’re not home
Your mind is not your own
Your heart sweats, your body shakes
Another link is what it takes

You can’t sleep, you can’t eat
There’s no doubt, you’re in deep
Your throat is tight, you can’t breathe
Another link is all you need

Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah

It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough, you know you’re

Gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to information

Every day I wade through hundreds of links to blog posts, news stories, and other items via Google Reader,, email, twitter, Buzz, and all my other sources. Topics I read about regularly run a wide gamut, from political news to professional stuff related to HR and social media, to entertainment and new age spirituality. I am not saying I read every article in total. I don’t. But I do skim them for content, relevance and sometimes, just for the entertainment value and bizarreness quotient.

The Information Intervention

Some little stitch in the fabric of my quirky personality causes me to believe that I should not be the only beneficiary of my wide ranging research, and so I tend to bookmark and share a lot of thing. I have had lot of people tell me that they don’t need me to post everything I read, and Jessica Lee even stopped following me on Twitter at one point until she was able to drag me into a Google Reader intervention with the help of Kris Dunn.

At her behest, I have developed a new discipline about how much I share, and a new strategy for how to share what I really like.

The information Solution

That is where the idea of my secondary blog came from. It is on Posterous, and it is called Michael VanDervort’s Posterous Bizstream: a business lifestream relevant to human resource people and others.

The concept is simple. I use a posterous bookmarklet in the toolbar of my browser, and any news stories, job postings, you tube videos, or other useless drivel topical information that I run across that I deem worthy of sharing gets posted directly into the bizstream. It helps me remember stuff that I want to find later, and it satisfies my urge to share my research, so it is all good. I hope it has reduced the noise from my Reader.

I still mark a lot of shit on Reader, but not as much as I used to. Hopefully, this will result in even less.

My new information sharing strategy

I have three rules I am going to follow regarding sharing research from here on out. They are:

Stuff marked on Google Reader will be for own research to promote the great work done by people I follow and respect. So, I may share some really relevant stuff there, but anything marked under “Share” or “Star” is for my own research. Anything that you see under “Like” is stuff that I wanted to pass along in support of colleagues and friends. In other words, a Reader version of a retweet.
I am going to share a maximum of 10 links a day on the posterous site. Hopefully this forces me to really think about what I share, and pick top-notch stuff. Hopefully, it will also provide a useful resource for people interested in the topics I follow.
Every Saturday, I will select my top 10 bizstream links of the week, and publish them here on the blog.

Here you go. Enjoy!

Top 10 Bizstream Links for March 13, 2010

Google Wave becomes more useful thanks to a new Extension Gallery.

Planning for your next CEO is a good read on corporate governance from the McKinsey Quarterly.

Digital peeps in the UK think that Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill is a complete mess, and will due untold harm to the digital economy.

Did you know that Conan O’Brien and Robert Reich contemplated doing an action film together?

More men are filing workplace sexual harassment charges. Are we seeing the development of a new trend?

Union pension plans are taking a huge beating during the Great Recession, and jeopardizing member benefits and the financial health of their employer payors along the way.

Businesses are struggling to catch up to the supremacy of Facebook and social media, and how they fit into the new workplace.

Ed Hamilton creates a unique resume on Google Earth.

Labor Unions and the “corporate free speech” decision – they may benefit more than anyone in Washington DC will admit openly.

Is a National Worker ID card back on the table as part of immigration reform?

Let me know what you think, and sign up to follow the Bizstream, which also feeds into my twitter stream.