Data Brain 2

A couple weeks ago I shared a graphic I created of what our brain looks like on an excess of nonprofit data. As I was putting that post together, I came across this from Dr. Carl Bazil, Director of the Division of Epilepsy & Sleep at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.

Your brain can’t constantly be bombarded with information and be expected to process it. In many ways, it’s accurate to think of your waking hours as the data-collection phase of your day, while the hours you spend asleep are the time when your brain sorts and makes use of that information. Skimp on sleep, and you handicap your brain’s processing power.

I'm going to tweak this a bit to speak to our nonprofit fundraising data work.

Your [database] can't constantly be bombarded with [dirty data] and be expected to process it. In many ways, it's accurate to think of your [early] hours as the data-collection phase of your day, while the hours you spend [cleaning up your data] are the time when your [database] sorts and makes [sense] of information. Skimp on [cleanup], and you handicap your [database's] processing power.