Friday, August 14, 2009

Short Takes: Information Overload, Active Investing, and more

1. According to a recent report, information overload costs workers 8 hours of productivity each week. They define information overload as the “disruption of the work day with irrelevant material, including e-mails, meetings, automated news feeds and Twitter.” The phrase “information overload” portrays the worker as a hapless victim of these information interruptions. This is silly. People compulsively check their Blackberries and iPhones out of boredom. Noise and visitors are interruptions; Twitter, email, and text messages can be ignored, but are just more interesting than the task at hand.

2. Where Does All My Money Go? hosts a guest article by a financial advisor with some clear thinking on the active versus passive investing debate.

3. Canadian Financial DIY has some fun with an analogy between inflation and alcohol.

4. Larry MacDonald is pessimistic about the future of TV because his young children seem to prefer using a computer. I see the world of TV changing rather than dying. My children are older and they do watch TV, but they do it on their computers while playing a computer game and chatting with friends, all at the same time. The days of having a large screen dedicated solely to cable or satellite content will eventually fade away. Most people will have all the screens in their homes connected to some sort of computer. Video content will arrive in a variety of ways. I’m not sure that life will be any better, though.

5. Big Cajun Man tries to decide whether to drive, bike, join a car pool, or take the bus to his new job. Taking a car is certainly the easiest path.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the mention and have a spectacular weekend...

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  2. Thanks for the mention - the advisor, who will remain anonymous, is going to give me more articles in the future. I think a number of people are looking forward to them...

    ReplyDelete