The proliferation of content and the importance of compartmentalization

Here's a scenario.

It's your first real week on the job. You've made it through the well-meaning but excruciatingly boring orientation and training. You've even taken care of those initial softball tasks that your manager lobs at you to see whether you're actually paying attention -- and to see whether your company has just wasted thousands of dollars in recruiting and perhaps even relocating you.

You're feeling pretty good.

After all, you're an intelligent 22-year-old, you went to a better college than most of the saps you work with, and you already know that you could easily replace your manager after a few months on the job. What's more, you're not even convinced this job will be challenging. Please! After holding down a six-class workload along with being the president of three extracurricular clubs, what can be more difficult? I mean, let's face it, it never takes you more than an hour to finish anything you are asked to do.

So you do what every smart kid does when under-stimulated: you consume content.

Slashdot, The New York Times, ESPN.com, your Twitter feed, Facebook pictures, your Gmail and Yahoo! Mail inboxes, the third song of the new Taylor Swift album, and that addicting Internet game that you just can't get enough of -- you read, listen to, and interact with all of these things, often simultaneously in different tabs of your favorite browser. This is how you work; in fact, this is how everyone you know works. How else can you stay abreast of everything that is happening in your world?

Of course, this doesn't slow you down at all. You send off the assigned task hours before the deadline, completing it all while engaging in an email debate with 10 geographically separated friends about the merits of universal healthcare. Man, this is easy. When do you get promoted?

And then you get the email from your manager.

You forgot that today, your work was going to your manager's manager's manager. What's worse, the senior executive already shared the findings with several of his colleagues and peers, only to be taken aback when one of them noted an error.

Your error.

Suddenly, you're not feeling so confident anymore. You've been publicly outed as careless and perhaps even lazy -- and it's just your fourth day with the firm. All those dreams of becoming the youngest CEO in recorded history are quickly fading away. You know that this is a mistake you won't live down easily. Like with those high school students on 90s' TV shows, this is going on your permanent record. Permanent.

How did you get here?

It's a fundamental paradox in today's society. The proliferation of content and avenues of distribution has led to a diverse, ever-changing, and incredibly rich compendium of information. Instead of turning to a definitive source like an encyclopedia or a newspaper for historical and current knowledge, our generation turns to Wikipedia, Google News and Google Reader, RSS feeds, and their peers for answers. The Wall Street Journal can't cover in a single day's paper everything that we want to or need to know; that's why we turn to blogs and tweets for additional details about the things we are most interested in and passionate about.

While being an invaluable resource, this trove of information and wisdom is a burden as well. Because all this knowledge is out there to be gained, you are at a competitive disadvantage if you don't consume enough content. Applying to Netflix but haven't read about the company's history and future plans? Someone else has. Joining an advertising agency without in-depth knowledge of mobile applications and location-based targeting? You're behind the times. Trying to become a banker in the consumer goods space but didn't catch the excerpts from P&G's latest conference call? There's the door. Employees and applicants are expected to have completely immersed themselves in the details and minutiae relevant to the job, and if they're not keeping up with the latest industry news, they're falling behind.

Trying frenetically to keep up, smart kids consume content whenever and wherever they can. When we wake up, a Blackberry red light flashes to remind us to read those emails from the vendor in India and to get up to date with our early-morning newsletters. As we sit in our cars, we listen to NPR on the radio while we flick through our iPhone apps at traffic lights. Between tasks at work, we catch up on what experts have been saying and watch a key interview from yesterday's conference. We can't sit down at a table without laying all our electronics in front of us.

The constant fractionalization of our attention makes pure, undiluted concentration a thing of the past. Generation X looks at our generation and calls it the promulgation of attention deficit disorder; we call it enlightened consumption. Nevertheless, both can agree that it is increasingly difficult to focus on a single task today without feeling the need to remain connected, whether by email, phone, or other means. Consequently, an inadvertent change to a number here, a sentence accidentally paraphrased there, and before we know it, small inaccuracies are compounding into greater problems hampering efficiency and productivity. With everyone in a rush to move on to the next thing, quality can often take more of a backseat than it should.

This, then, brings us back to the mistake. It is seemingly inevitable. How can we be informed and knowledgeable while still delivering all that is asked of us without stumbling every now and then?

The answer is compartmentalization.

One by one. Finish a task, then move onto another. As much as we are tempted to be on our email, monitoring news feeds, and keeping an eye on the latest college basketball box score while doing our work, our minds can only handle so much. No one denies that we need the time to do all of the aforementioned things; the key is finding the right times to do all of them.

So check your personal email when you get into work -- or better yet, on your phone before you get there -- and then log out for a few hours. Save links to the articles you need to read and skim through them when you take a break or over lunch. And, as far for March Madness... well, no one has really found a solution to that productivity problem (and let's hope no one ever does).

Our generation may be the most informed and most adept at multitasking yet. But that doesn't mean that we don't need the right habits to make sure we keep our productivity and accuracy at their optimal levels.

Why smart... yet clueless?

So, you're pretty smart.

Okay, maybe you're really smart. Maybe you invented Blogger before Google bought it. Or maybe you invented blogging itself. Whatever.

Maybe you went to a good college. Maybe you will soon go to a great college. You're well educated.

But if you're between the ages of 15 and 25, you either have realized or will realize the following soon: no matter what your IQ and how rigorous your courseload, some things will catch you absolutely off-guard the moment you step out of that campus bubble.

Your problems may be small, or they may be big; regardless of their nature, many of them will probably be unexpected.

That's where I come in. In some ways, I've learned more in the past two years after college than all four years during. I don't have all of the answers -- hell, I probably don't have most of them -- but what I do know is how I've been able to deal with the issues I've faced so far.

I'll offer my thoughts when I have them, and I hope you'll offer yours, too. Perhaps together, we'll be able to crack the confusion that is being in your 20s in the 2010s.

Figuring out your place a new media universe? Or just sick of living with horrible roommate after horrible roommate? This is your outlet.