Info Career Trends

by Erin Dorney

Information overload is nothing new to LIS professionals. Understaffing often leads to overwhelming and seemingly impossible deadlines. A delicate balance of work responsibilities, career goals, personal interests, and relationships can only be accomplished by strong prioritization of tasks, goals, and responsibilities.

I am currently finishing my last semester of graduate school at Syracuse University. For the past two years I have played the balancing act with multiple part time academic library positions, library teams and committees, workshops and conferences, freelance graphic design gigs, scholarship applications, coursework, and an internship. As my graduation date draws near, I’m adding job seeking, interviewing, and the possibility of relocation to my plate. (Not to mention my personal hobbies and relationships!) Here are four essential practices that have helped me prioritize along the way.

Visualization
The first step toward prioritizing your tasks is to define them, along with deadlines and degrees of importance and urgency. Whether you work better electronically (PDA, handheld computer, iPhone, Google/Outlook Calendar) or with a good old day planner, you won’t be able to adequately gauge the tasks at hand unless they are laid out in front of you. Visualizing what’s on your plate will help you make decisions about what to tackle first, and why.

One thing that has helped me juggle my responsibilities as a student, a library staff member, an intern, and a job seeker is to create multiple electronic calendars. Many digital calendar programs allow a user to create multiple calendars (usually color coded) that can be turned on or off. This allows me to have a calendar with due dates for a Syracuse University MLIS course, a calendar with work meetings and deadlines, and a calendar for continuing education (upcoming workshops and conferences). I can then view each of these calendars individually to hone my focus, or turn them all on and have a more complete overview of my week.

Resist temptation
When contemplating what I like to call “the order of accomplishment” (what should be done first), it is important to resist the urge to do all the easy and fun things first. Although this type of workflow might give you a quick burst of energy and sense of accomplishment, it will be difficult to maintain staying power the rest of the day. You will dread working on your less enthralling responsibilities and will be more prone to distractions (discussed in the next section). It is better to intersperse the exciting tasks as a little “reward” to yourself following the completion of a more arduous project.

However, your entire day should not be spent on work responsibilities. In order to maintain a healthy balance of work, home, and play, information professionals should remember that it is important to take time to relax. If I find myself stressed out, it’s usually not because I have more things to do than there are hours in a day. It’s because I have neglected to set aside personal time to regroup, focus, and rebuild my energy.

The age of distraction
While many are eager to describe the “Gen Y,” “Net Generation,” and “Born Digital Babies” as the utmost consumers of emerging Web 2.0 technologies, information professionals fall into the same boat. The same collaborative communities that sometimes distract students from their schoolwork can distract librarians from strong priority setting. Social networking, blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, bookmarking, and tagging are just a few emerging trends that have the potential to change information sharing worldwide.

However, too much of any good thing can make a helpful tool quickly deteriorate into a life-sucking addiction. If you find yourself constantly checking email, investigating Facebook profiles, and refreshing your browser for new blog posts in your feed reader, you might want to limit yourself to doing these things only one to three times per day. With a self-perpetuating realm of immediate communication, information professionals sometimes need to step back and consider both the benefits and the pitfalls of these popular tools.

Attitude
Above all, attitude is imperative to strong prioritization. Even if you have a well-thought-out plan, if you start your day with a negative attitude, it will be virtually impossible to accomplish all that you are capable of. You can easily be engaged, active, and enjoy yourself while accomplishing your different responsibilities. Your strengths in time management, multi-tasking, and willingness to help others likely brought you to the information profession in the first place.

It is also essential to remember your long-term goals when developing a positive attitude about your responsibilities. As a student, my first priority is usually schoolwork — I need my degree to obtain the career goals I envision for the future. My current library position offers me experience to build on and opportunities to participate in many different aspects of academic libraries. Attending continuing education workshops and conferences help me network with peers and colleagues, as well as fill gaps as information trends ebb and flow with time. Maintaining a balance between the many aspects of professional life, student life, and private interests (friends, family, hobbies) is the key to well-rounded success and personal fulfillment.

Erin Dorney is a soon-to-be-librarian (Syracuse University, May 2008 graduate) and staff member at the Rochester Institute of Technology Wallace Library. She blogs at Library Scenester, and is always on the prowl for new projects (thus necessitating constant prioritization!).

Tags: erin dorney, information overload, visualization, web 2.0, workflow