There is a common requests I get from users all the time - I need to see more information!

A lesson I learned years ago was that users can only process so much information before becoming unproductive - in spite of what they think.

Can a user process 100 records on a page? Sure. How about a 1000? Maybe. But, how about 5,000 records per page, across 700 pages? Never.

It is why searching, tagging and other organizational techniques exist.

One of the secrets to providing any product or service, is understanding how people will use it and more importantly if a feature request really reveals a use case OR a behavioral roadblock.

In my various careers, I have observed a range of fascinating behaviors when it comes to managing large quantities of information or work.

There are five behavioral types in my opinion.

• The Worker Bee, takes the information as it arrives, processes it and then goes back for more, over and over until they are done.
• The Batcher, grabs a chunk of information, processes it and then may or may not grab a new batch.
• The Cherry Picker, spends an inordinate amount of effort skimming information for the bits they feel warrant their attention, before processing any of it.
• The Procrastinator, who will spend a lot of time contemplating and trying to understand the scope of information presented to them, before devising a plan for how best to process it.
• The Buried, who get way too much information, usually because they got what they asked for and haven’t realized they need help or to restrict what they ask for.

These are the core groups I have observed in my years of managing workflow processes in hugely different environments.

Regardless of environment the only highly productive type, that is universal, is the Work Bee.

Worker Bee behavior is the predecessor to agile development trends. Its what previous generations called “having a good work ethic”.

What type are you?