Fundamental reading habits

There are few things so basic to the art and science of intelligence as reading, writing, and thinking. So anything that has the potential to radically alter the way we perceive any of these foundational tasks is sure to garner our attention.

Apparently, all of the headaches caused by reading hundreds to thousands of pages of cable traffic a day aren’t just the result of needing new glasses. We have long appreciated that developments in human computer interface have been largely passing the community by (while we are constrained for the most part to endure crumbling legacy systems or lowest-bidder contractor remakes based on poorly defined requirements.

However, when we find new developments rooted in fundamentally neurophysiology, we start to pay a great deal more attention. However, we do not usually get our scientific research from blog posts about press releases about technology solutions offered by companies seeking to profit from said technology. We also are not sure we could tolerate the nearly haiku like properties of their particular solution.

But in any event, we would be very happy to see solutions developed to maximize reading and retention for traffic (emails, cables, and any other damn thing in our reading queue.) We have seen too many young analysts drown, attempting to keep up with the firehose. Unfortunately, the coping strategies used elsewhere in business (such as GTD), are not ideal for highly intellectual and detail intensive analysis tasks.

But, as one very experienced analyst and community leader once said, "There is no such thing as information overload - there are only bad analytical strategies."

h/t Slashdot