Communication Overload And the Identity Crisis

With all the data and forms of communication coming at me on a daily basis it continues to make me think about solutions for managing it. I've blogged before on the overall communication overload pain. Many will say just "filter" it. I agree with that but it's still not all that easy to do. When it comes to Twitter for example, the recent addition of lists should help (once you finish the labor to set up and sort who you follow into those lists - which I have not!). I contend that the lists you want to watch varies for your personal vs. professional time so more improvement is needed.

One source of the pain appears to be that many of us have multiple identities or contexts in our lives; dad, soccer mom, work, family etc. The line between personal and professional is fuzzy at best and isn't as time-of-day defined as it once was. Work doesn't just shut off at 6 pm for example. Many of us need to see some amount of "professional" communications even "after" work.

Here's a thought that I've discussed with personal and professional peers like @Roger_Tee. How about the ability to control and filter your data feeds and incoming communications (yes, including voice) based on setting what "identity" you want to be at the moment?

For me personally that would mean a one click to switch to "personal" mode when I get home. Personal mode would have effects like;
- allow only calls that are from my "personal" contacts list. Due to the work/home blur that list would still include just a few key work contacts.
- allow only the set of tweets, IMs, other social media pings from friends or from my personal interest areas (like the Mets, Jets, Music or concert announcements, or NJ fishing). I'd turn off technology feeds or communications from my more casual professional connections
- Show me email only from my personal account(s).

If I were a coach on my personal time perhaps I'd have an identity for that too.

In short, for personal mode I'd try to disconnect as much as possible from my "professional" side. Turn off some of the inflow for a while. Two major factors for success here are you have to WANT to disconnect (the always connected addiction issue many of us have) and it has to be EASY to turn on such filtering.

"Professional" mode would be the opposite; turn off personal interest tweets and feeds, most personal voice calls etc. It's important to reduce interruptions, whether at work or at play. I don't have the link handy but there are many studies showing up about the cost of an interruption (email, voice calls etc) to your mental context and producitivy.

Perhaps some would benefit from multiple professional contexts as suggested by @Roger_Tee. Given he's providing consulting services to multiple clients, it may be useful to him to switch his context to the client he wants to focus on at that time. His email, tweets or other possible data feeds relevant to that client would then be in focus for him. He may or may not go as far as to change what phone or other forms of contact he wants to receive on a client by client basis. I have just started to try Google Wave. It may provide some of this context or filtering. I can see a wave per client for example. It isn't clear to me yet that Wave encompasses the full dashboard of incoming communication and information sorting.

I'm interested in the information and communication overload issue and how it impacts and changes our lives and some of our social behavior. Does any of this resonate with you? What ideas or wishes would you add? Please share with comments on this post.