I love the post and agree with most of it. I recently read this quote, and I found it to summarize the heart of this issue. “The capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.” (George Siemens, 2004). I always return to this when I feel overwhelmed by TMI.

Thanks for a great post,

~jeannette

It seems to me Kevin Washburn is referring to the structured experience. That’s what I was talking about with the relevance poke above. Not in the self-didact / informal learning sense.

Take, for example, an organization’s policy on Sexual Harassment (or any policy reference). The program SME contains X^3 information about statistics, policy conditions, processes, history, etc… Would you rather (1) have all of that information packaged up in a monolithic pill or (2) just tell me what my responsibilities are (relevance) and let me move on.

This may be (is definitely) a bad example… Since I’m not sure that many, if any, organizations get what they need from a preventative maintenance dipping.

Apply this same framing to any novice or general level training / skill building. Drinking from the firehose isn’t strategic.

Now flip that around once the basic level components / KSA are out of the way. I’d agree that for these folks and the auto-didact types we shouldn’t valve or selectively present targeted / pre-filtered stuff.

I think one of the things we need to take care to avoid in debates like this is the ‘one size fits all’ mentality. At one end of the scale we are seeing a healthy push towards ‘less is more’ for self-directed structured learning packages and activities. At the other end of the scale informal learning pushes the boundaries with ‘bring it on – give it all’.

At some point I hope we are able to clearly and consistently map out the contextual differences where patterns and approaches actually work – AND how the goals of the contexts are not mutually exclusive.

@Steve I’d agree motivation is key, but what it the motivation to “keep up”? Is it the honest hunger to find new and unknown or is it the fear of being “left behind”? I am not buying the relevance theory, it sounds nice, like you always have a purpose, but a lot of my scanning is to look at the zone of irrelevance to discover new things to make relevant. Otherwise, it sounds like navigating with blinders. Just my IMHO

@concretekax- I am on continual path of point missing but I enjoy putting out ideas that get thoughtfully shot down then trying to be some freaking pundit or expert. My point was thinking of the brain as a simple volume container is starting with a fallacy, and I wish I had D’Arcy’s phrase, “unchecked compulsion to consume it all” and proceeding with trying to manage new forms of information in an old way. So yes, a NECC conference exposes you to a flood of new things. What is the urgency to grab at all the straws at once? Isn’t there some buried layer of fear that says if you dont try to grok it all, other people will get there first? That you will “behind”? Doesn’t it make sense to take more of a scanning approach, collecting references (links, people) to return to later. e.g as you suggest after some brain yoga? I dont disagree at all the the reflective stepping back is very healthy. I use this all the time to think while exercising, long drives, etc.

What I object mostly is suggesting TMI exists like a syndrome, and people using it as an excuse not to innovate, change, to remain in a catatonic status of paralyzed status quo.

The solution to this feeling is the brain needs space to step back from new information and process for awhile. It is not really about there being too much information in the world or the limits of the brain, but about a human’s need to unplug and think about things for awhile before overloading the brain with more new ideas. After some space for reflection, then we are ready to jump into the new ideas again. But if we never slow down for a space to meditate and process then our new “knowledge” is likely to only be superficial at best or quickly forgotten in whatever file it goes in.

What a post, you nail a shift in thought and imagining that is so very important, and it is no surprise to me that where the issue lies is in the metaphors and analogies we use to understand the management of information which are obsolete in so many ways. This is a fantastic critque of the TMI myth.