Are You Overwhelmed?

What are you, someone wet behind the ears.

FOCUS!

Determine what you need and don't get distracted by the tangents

It's amazing.

Someone yells "FOCUS!" at me, and I focus!

What I can't hear you because of all the yelling.

I hear what you are saying, and what I did was switch job to a company that now appreciates what I do for them. I seriously suggest you do the same. If you want to know what stress is, stay where you are. If you want to experience life day to day with all it has to offer? Change your job! You and your family will benefit. If you want to know what stress is about, send me an email. I will enlighten you to it's adverse physical attributes as to what it can do to you physically and mentally. I've been there, got the TEE shirt, hat and Sweatshirt and Plaque(s). I know stress. You do not want to meet this!

The key word was "allegedly."

This is a common situation & a backlash from our electronic & IT development for "tons" of data. For me, it all starts at the beginning with the simple Ein-Stien-ism "Bad Data Can Appear as Believeable as Good Data", Reference Peter K. Stein, Grandfather of modern day Measurement Engineering.

Professor Stein developed the "Unified Approach for Acquiring Valid Data On Purpose & Being Able to Prove It!"

A Basic Principle is: Every Component in a Measuring System, Resonds in every way it can to everything in it's Environment. There are 16 Responses a Transducer can have to it's Environment. Only 1 is the Measurement, the other 15 Reponses are Errors.

I have discovered that chemical reactions can create magnetic fields that can cause errors in measurements, & that temperature gradients can affect most measurement systems.

Some aspects of the Unified Approach are easily performed while others are more difficult. For example: If you have a Linear Measurement System, then if you double the amplitude of the input you should have twice the output. If you input a frequency, you should have only integer multiples of that frequency in the output, otherwise you know right away that measurement system is non-linear & has errors. If you have a resistive strain gage & remove the excitation voltage, any output signal is measurement error!

There is also the "Measurement Uncertaintity Principle": Have we disturbed or changed the phenomenom we are trying to measure, by measuring it?

Another Ein-Stein-ism is "Calibrate the Way You Use!"

My advice would be to first sort the "avalanche of data", into what you can Prove as Valid Data & Suspect the Rest! This is how we have managed the data in aerospace, outer space & National Laboratories since adopting "The Unified Approach". Apollo successes are an excellent example.

Sometimes we have to go back to basics before leaping forward. Management needs to understand this, Accountants cannot; Engineers tend to be caught in-between these days. Hang in there & question the data. Garbage In Means Garbage Out! Paul

I can only offer some of the things that help me:

1) Develop the highest possible understanding of what is expected of you, what you want to achieve, and the environment you operate in.

2) Realize that someone is trying to overwhelm you. This stems from working on point 1. There is a war going on for our attention. It is being waged by persons who wish to divert our attention from what is truly important. You will need a certain "combat" attitude to survive this.

3) Have an information handling paradigm or routine. This has to do with ranking communications in terms of priority, making the time to handle them, and realizing that you need to, and are expected to, control your own communication lines.

4) Ignore bad news from all but your most trusted sources. The only point of most of it is to make you feel overwhelmed. For instance, I do not pay much attention to the news.

5) Develop methods for looking up data quickly so you don't have to remember every detail, and get good at it.

6) Clear your words. If there is a word or symbol in any priority communication that you don't fully understand, you owe it to yourself and the person who sent it to you to make sure you know the correct intended meaning.

7) Watch for signs of violation of any earlier points and act to correct. If "work" starts making you feel "tired," pull yourself out of it by taking a walk or some similar extroverting activity. Then look for the communication line that is trying to overwhelm you and cut it if you can.