89 - Julia Soffa on information overload and how it's hurting our bodies & the businesses we work for
Julia Soffa, Principal Internal Communications Manager at Guru, joined us on The Modern People Leader.
We talked about information overload, the golden rule of communication, how to build an attention audit survey, and why we should all embrace JOMO.
Go listen now on?Apple?or wherever you get your podcasts.
Don't have enough time to listen to the whole thing? See the top takeaways below.
Top 3 takeaways from the episode:
1. Information overload is hurting our bodies ??
No longer are we being chased by a lion that's causing our bodies to go into fight, flight, or freeze mode.
Now, it's the pings, emails, to-do lists, and unanswered texts.
That digital debt is impacting our parasympathetic nervous systems.
Julia says that for humans to complete the stress response cycle, we have to shake it off in some way to indicate to our bodies that we've been "saved". For many, that's in the form of exercise.?
If we don't, we hold all of that stress in our bodies, which leads to exhaustion and eventually burnout.
2. Why we should all embrace JOMO ??
JOMO is short for?joy of missing out.
Julia thinks we need to apply this concept at work. It's exhausting being in every slack channel, every email, and every meeting.
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It makes it hard for us to get into a flow state and do the thing we were hired to do.
That's why to her, JOMO is giving people time back.?Instead of having anxiety about not being in the room, people can rely on a system that allows them to stay up to date and contribute their thoughts.
One example she gave was Guru's monthly business review with?their?director and above folks. After each?review, the full recording, key takeaways, and reports are shared with all employees.
3. The golden rule of communication ??
When employees are onboarded at Guru, they're introduced to the golden rule of communication, which is a?handshake agreement to do two things:
1?? When you're developing communication internally, think about?the needs and wants of your audience.
2?? If something doesn't make sense to you, give immediate feedback and?ask the person to clarify what they mean.
Julia says the second part of the agreement levels the playing field and creates a culture where miscommunication isn't happening as much because people have built the habit of being honest.
The career advice Julia would give to her 22-year-old self
"Make room for play and creativity in your work. As as we get older that can get stamped out of us if we don't take the time to figure out what play and true fun is for us. That's often when we're in flow. The world isn't that hospitable to adults playing. It sounds silly. But what is play for you? Think about integrating that into a ritual in a daily or weekly way that creates space and time for you to do your best work."
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Co-founder & COO @ Charter | Mom | ex-NY Times head of transformation
1 年Julia, thanks for sharing your experience and your brilliance!
Senior Director of Procurement | Strategic Sourcing, Purchasing Operations and Supply Chain Leader | Direct and Indirect Category Management
1 年That is an interesting perspective. I think this "information overload" hurts creativity and takes the focus off the important things. However, because it is systemic, and happens across industries, companies of all sizes (yes, global corp are more critical), and countries, it's tough to "solve."