We live in a noisy world filled with conversations (virtual and otherwise) vying for our attention each and every moment of our waking hours: office chats and meetings, cell phone notifications, emails popping up, news and social media alerts - all forming a universe of “all you can access” information. So with huge volumes of information at our disposal, how do we tune-in and pay attention to the right information? How do we identify the right conversations to join? How do we sift through the noise to find the golden nuggets of truth and to spot the pearls of genuine wisdom?
In a world buzzing with information, noise is the background hum of our work lives (in an open-space work environment and in the digital space.) As the level of noise increases so does the level of information clutter we have to deal with on a daily basis. To succeed in the modern work place, we need to learn to tune-in. It’s not about accessing information; it’s about effectively processing it. Managing information overload is like drinking from a water hose. Knowing how to tune-in and process information effectively will give you a major competitive advantage when making decisions and taking the right action. Here’s how:
1. Tune-in: develop sensory perception
To tune-in means to not only look but to actually see, to not only hear but to truly listen. Seeing and listening require focused attention with the intention to discover and to understand, to fully tune out and ignore the irrelevant and to zoom in on the right conversations and the things you really need to know.
2. Sort out: develop the ability to synthesize information
Sorting out information is all about sifting through a lot of garbage to separate the golden from all that glitters that’s not so golden. This requires effective interpretation, integration, and organization of data. Effectively integrating information, knowledge, and insights is the key to achieving better results.
3. Take action: develop the courage to act in a noisy yet ambiguous world
Even when you master the skills of tuning in and sorting out information, it’s not likely you’d ever be able to corral all the facts and combine all the pieces of information to reach full certainty. To succeed in a noisy world, you have to get comfortable with the fact that you are never going to have all the facts. Thus, you need to get comfortable with uncertainty and making decisions when you don’t have all the information. Stay-tuned to keep taking action on all the nuggets you uncover as you carve out new paths as new information becomes available.
Information is not something we acquire. It’s something we tune into. The more we know, the more we need to fine-tune our game.
