Catch up with information

Today’s world is all about information; even while I am writing this essay, there is a new feed in my twitter, facebook , linked-in or outlook accounts every minute. The revolution in technology after 1980’s and the speed of technological improvements which is known to be the double the capacity we have every year are forcing us to adapt to a new lifestyle. We learn to live in non-stop flowing information. This new era brings some consequences. The speed of information spreading is very fast and this information is not always correct, useful or necessary. Due to this fact choosing the right information and spending time on useful information get us one step ahead than others.

Even a teenager is exposed to hundreds of different information, distractions, and messages during a day, so let’s think about a manager who is responsible for a hundred employees and has at least one supervisor. He/she will get hundreds of mails from employees, about employees, and her social life also will add more to information for the manager to catch up, and also as a result of a global world not only her country’s news and recent changes but also whole world’s news and recent changes will look for a way to reach her. Let’s make it more complicated and add the fact she has a family with two kids, and also still has close relations with her parents and relatives. If we sum up the information she needs to catch up, we see that now, life is an information cloud and the fog is getting thicker day by day. In this fog, we have to find our own way to keep on living a successful life.

In the beginning of 20^th century, finding the information was bringing success to people. Today, choosing and processing the right information bring success to people. But how is it possible to choose the right information while you know the fact that you have to ignore most of the information you get? And the information you ignore may have the key points. Although this seems very hard to do, we see that successful managers are very capable of doing this process. You have to first set your vision, personal vision of your own life, then set your missions to reach your vision, this way you will know how much you will spend time for your personal, social life and business life. For example, one who knows that her mission is to be the best in her field knows that she has to sacrifice some of her social life.

When it comes to organizing the information in the business life, you have to analyze what kind of information you need, what would be helpful for your position, what sources give you the most accurate information. To do this you need to have clear goals. You need to know exactly what you need to know and what you do not need to know. For example, a HR manager should know that she does not really need to know the sales reports, marketing operations, or financial reports. She needs to know basic information about these topics and she has to focus on analyzing performance reports, staff reports, and things like these. This way she will know which mail to look for, which meeting to attend, which person to contact. After a time, if you set your goals, you start to have a routine and the interesting fact about this is most of us don’t even realize that we have a routine, so creating a routine, and managing your time will speed up processes and create more time to analyze more information. While creating this routine, we have to realize that we are doing this to get faster and create more time, or in other words we are doing this routine as a result of our own time management. Having the right order in this routine will end up forcing us to be faster day by day.

While we say that this is a result of technology, same technology helps us to organize our life according to our choice. We know that are useful software to warn us about deadlines, send us links about the topics we choose, updates the related news to our selection and reminds us some of our daily routines. What is more the increasing usage of smart phones lets us use time more efficiently, as they have the applications we talked about above, also we can send/check e-mails everyplace where we have GSM connection, we can record important meetings, we can send messages without typing (great time saver), we can check news, we can see recent updates on our field, we can hold meetings even with more than one person on our phones with also video talk support. Technology looks like helping us when you know these facts, however I believe it brings more pressure than the help it does. Still if you plan your life, set your goals, and know to say no to some information and even to some people, technology will save your life, and career!

However, we cannot guarantee that everything will go smoothly when you set your goals and do your routine. We will miss some important information in the ones we ignore, we will say “No, thanks!” to wrong persons, we will miss some opportunities. And this is exactly why we see that today’s successful managers know how to handle bad situations, they are great at managing risks, and they have self confidence on giving instant decisions on urgent topics. As a result, when they miss some important information due to their information management, they immediately take actions to avoid it happening again.

In conclusion, we are surrounded by information flows,  technology is not only helping us to organize our life, but also adds more information channels to our life, we find ourselves in rushing to some place, stressing about a meeting, feeling like we do not have enough time, laying on our bed feeling like you had never rested in your life. This is the part of the evolution. We may look the same as a bourgeois  from 19th century, but we cannot live the life same way he did. We have to catch up the right information and we have to evolve with the technolgy that surrounds us. Setting your goals and creating routine to save time are simple and easy steps to be the part of the evolution.