Almost half of 6,000 Indian consumers who were surveyed recently said they encountered an information overload during the pandemic. About 52% of those surveyed also said the number of sources they checked for information each day had risen substantially.
The survey, conducted by Nasdaq-listed Information Management Solutions firm, OpenText, to understand the impact of information overload on people during the pandemic, showed that 44% felt this information overload had added to their daily stress.
Also, two in five respondents felt a more streamlined information database would be helpful to deal with the varied information sources such as emails, diaries, news feeds, company websites, calendars, etc. while making a work or home-life related decision. Some 43% felt the need to remember multiple passwords to access each app had added to their anxieties.
More than half (52%) of the respondents agreed that the number of information sources – email, news feeds, diaries, social media sites, company drive, shared drive etc. — they checked each day had increased dramatically. The idea of using of 6-15 apps every day seemed stressful to nearly 50% of those interviewed.
Further, the data suggested that this ‘information overload’ was significantly impacting both personal and work life.
Less than a quarter (24%) of respondents were able to limit the number of tools, apps, and resources they accessed to complete a work project to three or fewer. More than a third (36%) of working respondents typically spent more than a minute searching for a specific file or piece of information for work purposes. Some 39% said accessing work email was the main problem while 37% said accessing corporate file systems and work content was their biggest challenge.
“The research data reveals that a significant proportion of the working population struggles with accessing work emails and corporate file systems, thereby hampering their productivity,’’ said Isaac Rajkumar, MD, India and vice-president, engineering at OpenText .
