Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox):
"Our knowledge environment is getting ever more contaminated by information pollution. Things we need to know are drowning in irrelevant information. Symptoms include:

• In most companies, employees squander an hour or more each day simply 'doing email.'


• Employees fritter away 48 hours each year trying to unearth job-related information on bad intranets compared to the time they would need on an intranet with usability in the top 25%. The resulting productivity loss amounts to millions of dollars for mid-sized companies.


• Many websites alienate users by burying answers to basic questions in useless corporatese.


• Email messages that customers actually want, such as useful newsletters or customer-service confirmations, don't survive overflowing inboxes -- often because senders ignore the principles of good email design.

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What Individuals Can Do

All time-management courses boil down to one basic piece of advice: set priorities and allocate the bulk of your time to tasks that are crucial to meeting your goals. Minimize interruptions and spend big chunks of your time in productive and creative activity.

Unfortunately, current information systems encourage the opposite approach, leading to an interrupt-driven workday and reduced productivity. Here are six steps to regaining control of your day…

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040105.html