"Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer" are here but how quickly will they pass? Will it all be one big blur? So much competes for our attention these days that even summer days race by. Since the start of the 1990s, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has been on the rise, not just among children, but now among the adult population as well. Victims of adult ADD are likely to initiate more tasks and projects than they'll ever finish, get bored easily, seek thrills readily, have a propensity to be late while loathing having to wait, and not be averse to taking foolish risks. The sudden rise of adult ADD, while it may have genetic components, certainly receives a major boost from our kinetic, hyper-speed, information-bombarded society.

Later this year my book, the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done," will be published by Alpha/Penguin. In the first chapter I discuss how enhanced communication technology spawns information overload. In 1905, the typical person generated only a tiny amount of information in his or her entire life. Whereas notable people wrote dozens and dozens of letters, the typical person wrote only a handful. Today, by some estimates, career professionals write 80% to 85% of all original documents.

If the total amount of unique information annually generated in the world were to be parceled out to every man woman and child on earth, each person would be given a personal library equivalent to 250 books. One estimate holds that information doubles in the world every 72 days. The Library of Congress catalogues 7,000 new items each day. More than 2,000 new websites go online each day. A minimum of 2,000 books are published world wide each day. In 1947, the first year Books in Print started collecting data, there were 85,000 titles in existence and 45 publishers listed. Fifty years later, there were almost 50,000 publishing houses in the U.S. alone!

None of us are immune to the information overload shower. The amount of information available often becomes a hindrance to productivity. For example:

• The average business manager receives 190 messages per day -- Associated Press, May, 20, 1998


• One-third of managers are victims of "Information Fatigue Syndrome." 49% said they are unable to handle the vast amounts of information received. 33% of managers were suffering ill health as a direct result of information overload. 62% admitted their business and social relationships suffer. 66% reported tension with colleagues and diminished job satisfaction. 43% think that important decisions are delayed and their abilities to make decisions are affected as a result of having too much information -- Reuters "Dying for Business " report


• The Web contains an estimated 3.2 billion pages of information -- NEC Research Institute, Princeton, NJ


• A single super bookstore offers 150,000+ titles; stocks 2,500 domestic and foreign newspapers, periodicals, and magazines; and can order 200,000 more book titles from national distributors. The children's section includes 15,000 titles; the music section has 25,000 CDs and cassettes -- Barnes and Noble Booksellers

No course that you took in college, no article or book, no mentor, no company training session, nothing you've likely experienced thus far in your professional or personal lives has prepared you for functioning smoothly in a world of unrelenting exponential information generation. The inmates have the keys, the cell doors are open, and data has run amok.

Weirdly, oddly, sadly, the higher the level of distraction, as with information overload, the greater we tend to seek it. You can get things done with electronic gadgetry, but beware, the types of things you get done will be of a certain ilk. Whole other realms of accomplishments may be unknown or out of reach for you. It is time to be more prudent with what information we allow ourselves to be exposed. If this blog does not offer fresh insights and new perspectives, it would make sense to unsubscribe! And guard other aspects of your personal environment as well.

Long-term trends all but guarantee that in the future, the environment all around you will only get noisier. The distractions will come faster, louder and more furiously. It is vital to regain, or perhaps develop for the first time, the ability to take quiet reflection. In doing so, at first, you will feel as if you've been left out of the party, but was it a party you wanted to attend in the first place? And even if you wanted to attend, did you want to attend all the time at that decibel level with no breaks?

Long-term types of accomplishment, grand achievements in your career -- the big stuff -- may require going where you haven't gone before, to that place and frame of mind where the best of your thoughts can emerge. Soetsu Yanagi, in the Unknown Craftsman writes, "Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs."

When you learn to value quiet reflection over frenetic activity, the breadth and scope of what you can get done improves remarkably. Silence can be golden, but only if you respect it, know how to harness it, and recognize the gift that it has always provided.