In the Workplace

#protip: Too Much Information

I’m slowly reading Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford as an exploration of making, but this caught my eye for a different reason.

“In the real world, problems don’t present themselves in this predigested way [like a textbook math problem]; usually there is too much information, and it is difficult to know what is pertinent and what isn’t. Knowing what kind of problem you have on hand means knowing what features of the situation can be ignored.”

It’s tempting as librarians to get ALL THE INFORMATION, but often when dealing with sticky situations in our buildings, some of that needs to be filtered out. Figure out the real issue and address it; everything else is noise.

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