After a chaotic 2008, we are faced with a clean slate, a chance to make and maybe adhere to New Year's resolutions, and to regain sanity in 2009.

But where do workers go for answers to questions about how to cope with information overload?

For more than 30 years, Xerox Corporation social scientists have been studying how workers communicate, organise and generally get things done.

In fact, they pioneered the science of ethnography, where researchers track the habits of workers as they go about their day.

Inspired by their Future Of Work study, here are nine tips to help you save time and manage information overload:

1. Breathe. It may sound simple, but not enough people take the time to do it.

So schedule breaks into your daily working routine. It helps productivity - even stepping away from your desk for a moment.

Even a quick nap helps you regenerate and be more productive.

2. Simplify your schedule. Try scheduling all of your meetings on specific days so you have more time on non-meeting days to process information coming in - it's much easier to focus when you don't have a meeting looming in 20 minutes.

3. Back it up. No information is worse than too much. Make sure you have a solution in place for regular back-up in case of disaster.

4. De-clutter your desktop (both real and electronic). File, pile or dispose of papers as soon as you receive them.

Scan and save important documents to reduce desktop clutter instead of filing. On your computer, consider getting rid of folders altogether and using desktop search engines to find things when you need them.

5. Touch it once. Often we waste time dealing with the same piece of information again and again.

Respond to a document as soon as you receive it, either put it in its file or delete /shred it the first time you touch it.

6. Forget the free stuff. Email garbage and unsolicited offers come at a price. Choose quality over quantity. Manage your bills and accounts online and respond to the "remove me from your mailing list" prompts.

7. Use your tools. Make use of your phone for getting the right info at the right time. For instance, you don't have to waste time printing maps if you can access them from your phone.

GPS phones can give you the right information based on your actual location.

8. Use Real Simple Subscription (RSS) wherever possible. RSS can be a real time-saver. Here's how it works: You sign up for an aggregator, enter your areas of interests and it helps you see all your news in one place.

9. Manage mobile madness. Use a mobile device with email support to make hours way from your desk more productive.

Keeping track of email throughout the day can help you anticipate future work, and take care of mini-projects as they arise instead of waiting until you are back in the office later in the day and then having to sift through a huge pile of messages.

Tackling information overload is important for most global businesses today, and it will be even more so tomorrow and five years from now.

These findings will help people around the world leverage the tools they have today and plan strategies and techniques that will enable effective collaboration and information management in the future.

The findings from the ethnography team are used to help Xerox customers understand their future workforce, and they also impact the design of products and services to make the future worker more efficient.

Rabin Ram is divisional director, Xerox Global Services at Bytes Document Solutions. Contact him on 011-928-9111 or rabin.ram@bdsol.co.za.