Breakdown on the Information Superhighway: Ever-increasing workplace demands
are pushing U.S. professionals to a “breaking point,” fueled by information
overload, a new survey contends. LexisNexis, a global information services
company, collected responses from more than 650 white-collar workers in its 2008
National Workplace Productivity Survey. The results point to an alarming trend
among U.S. professionals—namely, too much information and hardly enough time in
a workday for people to find the information they need when they need it.
Eighty-five percent of those surveyed cite this frustrating exercise as the
biggest waste of their time.
Another 62 percent complain that they fritter away too much time sifting
through irrelevant information, thus hampering their productivity. Searching for
knowledge costs workers an average of 2.5 hours a day. Nor will the problem
disappear in the future, with more than 40 percent of employees speculating that
they will be unable to cope with the unrelenting stream of information gushing
their way.
The information glut is acutely worse for lawyers and related legal
professionals, 80 percent of whom say they spend an inordinate amount of time
riffling through useless or irrelevant data—even to the point that about 50
percent “occasionally omit billing clients” for work.
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