TMI — short for “too much information” — is often used when someone offers more personal details than the listener wants to hear. But it can apply to other areas of communication as well.

Amid the busy publishing cycle this week I am taking moments here and there to limit the increasing number of emails that comes my way.

Having instant communication is a wonderful benefit both personally and professionally. And I try to be a very accessible person.

However, the volume of mass emails — not individual correspondence — is swamping me. It seems that every publicist has snatched up my email and added it to her or his list.

All day long the BlackBerry vibrates with one request after another to promote someone’s book, attend someone’s training or carry the water for someone’s cause. Then there are the groups I never joined.

My word for today is “unsubscribe” — and when that doesn’t work, “blacklist” comes in handy. My goal is to crawl out from under this information overload.

After years of embracing multiple new means of getting information, the current challenge is to get the desired information without getting all of the rest. Exploring simpler, better ways of filtering messages is high on my “to do” list.

In the same way caller I.D. and answering machines curtailed telephone marketers, I’m mounting a better strategy for managing email delivery.

For entrepreneurs out there looking for the next big thing, I have a suggestion: “information saturation management.” Just think, ISM could be the answer to TMI.

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