Pity your poor mail carriers. Their shoulders must burn under the mailbag strap as they haul each day's mail to your desk. On a recent day, chosen at random, my mail drop included:

• A brochure promising (for only $1,495) an "intensive, hands-on workshop" from which you "go back to your office with a complete solution-oriented plan."

• A four-page flyer (see the metallic inks shine!) pointing me to a Web site that will give me "innovation, perspective, and impact."

• A packet of six book reviews, which left me feeling vaguely guilty about all the great books I should be reading but haven't read and probably won't. (About this time, a whiny little voice whispered in my ear, "And you call yourself a leader?")

I dropped the mail and booted up my laptop — and found seventeen e-mails in my inbox.

Even to live in our Age of Information is hard; to lead in our Age of Information is even harder. How can you keep up? Learn what's important? Filter out what's not? Grow as a person? ...