The Information Overload Due to Attention, Interruptions and Multitasks

Background: Since the existence of the nomadic people, throughout the commercial and industrial society, right up to the information society, information has increased its factor by the millions but, however, the human brain has maintained itself as it was created fifty thousand years ago, Objective: This article had as its objective to analyze the factors which are related to the Information Overload (IO), in the knowledge workers’ perception as to the relationships and the factors’ degree of importance used in the framework created by Eppler and Mengis (2003). Results: The model that was found presents defined associations and reinforces the model that was studied. The construct Task and Process, in which multitask and interruption are inserted, are in first place in the IO phenomenon’s explanation. The attention difficulty obtained a positive correlation with the information overload and the use of e-mail, social network, mobile phone, wireless technologies interfere with the information overload. Conclusion: The respondents samples tend to accept the attention’s importance in work productivity, the pressure of time over tasks, and the presence of the new communication technologies that increase the quantities of information, the excess of e-mails, and the presence of multitasks and interruptions that affect their performance.