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Be careful - it could damage your health.

Information overload can cause stress, over-tiredness, ill-health and damage to your personal relationships. It can paralyse your ability to make decisions, damage your confidence and lead you to make foolish choices. Information plague is the disease of the information age.

"Unless we can find ways of staying afloat amid the surging torrents of information we may end up drowning in them," is the dire warning from psychologist Dr. David Lewis who has diagnosed the syndrome. His ideas are backed up by research into information overload questioning more than 1,000 business managers internationally.

It found:

• 49% of mangers said they were often or very frequently unable to handle the volumes of information they receive
• 31% of managers had to deal with enormous amounts of unsolicited information.
• 42 % felt time was often wasted collecting information
• 65% felt the stress of information overload reduced job satisfaction and caused tension with colleagues
• 62% said it put personal relationships under strain
• 61% had to cancel social activities because of the pressure of dealing with information overload
• 60% were too tired for leisure
• 52% said their health suffered
• 49% said they often or very often worked late or had to take information home with them. UK managers were most likely to do this while those in Hong Kong were the least likely.
• 47% said collecting information distracted from their main job responsibilities.
• 43% felt important decision were delayed and the ability to make decisions was affected as a result of too much information