Book Review
This practical book reads like a survival guide for adapting to life in the information age.
I recently read Ross Dawson’s ‘Thriving on Overload, The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information’ and highly recommend it to anyone who feels overwhelmed, distracted and stressed about the amount of information they need to cope with day to day.
The 5 powers are:
The power of purpose
The power of framing
The power of filtering
The power of attention
The power of synthesis
For each of these powers, Dawson provides frameworks that help us to think about our relationship with information, our frame of reference and ways of organizing, skills for filtering out the ‘noise’, or information that has no value, different ways of paying attention and finally synthesis, which is the ability to see patterns and higher-level systems.
‘Thriving on Overload’ is a super useful resource for researchers and design consultants, who will relate to all of these ‘powers’. In our work, our secret sauce is our expert ability to synthesize large amounts of information to uncovering insights and opportunities that can lead to a better understanding of the problem, better decision-making, and ‘aha’ moments that lead to better experiences and true innovation.
This is a hard thing to teach, so I was intrigued to dig into this chapter, and Dawson doesn’t disappoint. I appreciated the framework he provides for understanding this skill and the examples of different approaches and resources for further exploration. I also liked how he relates these skills to facing some of the challenges of our time.
In summary, this is a great read. Given that we have literally all the information in the world at our fingertips, with the currency being our attention, it’s no surprise that we need to develop strategies for focusing our time and energy on information that brings value to our work and lives.
