Scanning

Posted Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 10:12pm in Media  | 

Great post by David Brain on the number of inputs he receives in a given day. The amount of messages that we receive through both regular media and social media in a 24 hour period is massively high. To a point where you simply can’t take all of them in. And remember, this is excluding advertisements.

I left a comment on David’s post but somehow it got lost (Geordie spam filter apparently) but I pretty much agreed with what he had to say. I often feel ‘consumed’ because I’m so involved in social media - often to the point where it, for want of a better phrase, does my head in. There’s simply too much to absorb. I’ve tried to implement time-saving methods to keep on top of what’s going on, but these are generally met with limited success.

So here’s my list of daily inputs

Email - 50

This number is for work and personal emails. David’s is much higher at 200. But then again, I don’t belong to a 2500+ strong network and I’m not in charge of 550 individuals in 11 countries. :-)

Newspapers - 2 (800 stories and nibs)

Note to self: Must start reading more newspapers at home - The Tube and newspapers go together so well. Sidenote: My paper of choice yesterday was the newly introduced Durham Times. Way hey! Who said newspapers where dead when Durham can launch its very own?!

Facebook - 80

I’m using Facebook increasingly for both personal and professional reasons of late and can only see it increasing. In fact, whenever I’m online I just leave a Facebook open in a browser tab and keep checking every 10 mins and there’s always new content in the News Feed on the homepage. It’s very addictive if you haven’t noticed?

Blogs - 680 (170 feeds)

I’ve guestimated that if I have 170 feeds then each will provide on average four posts per day. I’m subscribed to the likes of the Media Guardian etc that publish multiple times per day which kind of balances out the ones that don’t post so regularly.

TV - 24

The only TV I watch these days is the news - either Sky or BBC - my old flatmate will testify to that. I guess, by David’s methodology, I receive around 24 inputs.

Radio - 0

Haven’t listened to radio in a while. Last FM is taking up all my listening time unfortunately.

And that’s it. In total I receive:

1634 inputs on average on any given day.

11438 inputs on average in a week.

594776 inputs on average in a year.

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6 Comments

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Paull Young

Monday, June 25, 2007 at 12:37am

No radio - but how about podcasts mate?

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Stephen

Monday, June 25, 2007 at 12:50am

Forgot about podcasts mate. To be honest, I only put in about two hours of podcasts per week.

I’ve been struggling lately.

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David Brain

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 4:23pm

So my question Stephen is do you, like me, find it difficult to switch from the scanning mode to the ‘concentrate and do’ mode? That I think will be a core skill of the future.

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Stephen

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 5:44pm

I do. It’s one of my biggest issues with social media. I can be working at my computer, decide to read my feeds, click on a link and before I know it I’ve travelled through multiple blogs and websites and I’ve blown half an hour.

If I’m, say, writing on a Word doc and I don’t have access to the internet I’m much more productive because I don’t have any distractions.

Just thinking about the ‘concentrate and do’ mode and I’m in agreeance. The PR person who can give their attention to the job in hand without losing focus is the one who’ll succeed.

I think I’m going to try and apply this to how I work because although I get the job done, it tends to take longer than it should. I am easily distracted.

That said, I think it’s still important to keep your finger on the pulse and be aware with what’s going on. Online media works at blistering speed (e.g. Mike Manuel’s 90 second news cycle) so even taking a week off from it you could potentially fall behind. I guess it’s a case of finding a happy medium… If there is such a thing in social media?

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Stephen

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 8:42pm

Little update. I’m sorting my feeds out so I can read them quicker. I think I’ve found a system where I can read (scan) more feeds in a shorter time.

Let’s see if it works!

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Corporate Twit? at Piaras Kelly PR - Irish Public Relations

Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 7:06am

[...] Is Twitter going to end up as yet another tool that adds to the workload? Stephen Davies has a fascinating post about the number of inputs he receives each day in the form of emails, newspapers he reads, updates from social networking sites, blogs he reads (ignoring all the phonecalls and client requests in between!) He calculates that he receives the following shocking number of inputs: 1634 inputs on average on any given day. 11438 inputs on average in a week. 594776 inputs on average in a year. [...]

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