Tips For Dealing With Information Overload

Philippe Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped, asked 14 talented people how they cope with the digital onrush. There are some helpful suggestions (and don't we all need it). But I was gobsmacked to see that he had sought and actually elicited advice on this matter from Noam Chomsky:

«I wish I could answer sensibly. I just can’t. You should see the room in which I’m working. Piles of books, clippings, manuscripts, notes,... All sorts of lost treasures buried in them.

That doesn't help me much. But I am massively impressed that Philippe can obtain advice on organisation from one of our intellectual giants. (Philippe --- that really was the Noam Chomsky?). Do you think Sean Connery would have any advice for me on how to keep my desk tidy? Or would Sophia Loren deign to advise me on improvements for our garden?

I think Matt Cutts's simple suggestion is the one that I will take away:

At the beginning of the day, write down the 1-2 things you really want to accomplish that day. That will help keep you on track.

The thing that most helps me to stay on track, hour by hour, is our home-grown customer relations wiki-database-blog. For some reason it is called Crumb. I am hoping that one day some Ruby ace will enhance Crumb so it can answer my emails for me.