Email overload and ways of fighting it are being discussed more and more as time goes on. Many vendors are selling tools that are aimed at making our email experience more productive. Some of them are very well thought of, e.g. ClearContext Inbox Manager.
Even though I’m a tool vendor myself, I want to make it clear that better software cannot solve email overload. Better software can just alleviate the dire situation we’re all in. Two quite varied examples are anti-spam products and automatically color-coding your messages according to various criteria.
Don’t be fooled by any marketing message that says [product] will solve your email overload problems. It won’t. It can’t. Only you can solve your problems.
The reason for this is the fact that email overload is not the problem; it is just a symptom of the problem. Email overload is a result of:
- lack of organization
- bad work habits & lack of discipline
- lack of focus & concentration
- lack of training (none of us were trained to deal with such a deluge of information)
Email overload is a subjective feeling. When I regained full control of my email, I was still getting just as much email as before, but I no longer suffered from email overload. I had learned to handle it properly and still keep my balance. Although the feeling of email overload may be directly related to the height of the pile of unhandled emails in your inbox, the stress is compounded by all those other tasks that your email has been distracting you from completing.
A bad workman blames his tools
If you suffer from email overload, there is something wrong with you. There is probably something seriously wrong with your organization’s work culture as well, but don’t hide behind this: it does not mean that you have to keep suffering.
So how do we fix the situation? GTD is a good solution to the root-cause problems I mentioned above. But GTD requires practice and discipline, so it’s helpful to select tools that reinforce your good habits — the tools won’t do the work for you, but they can certainly make it easier to “stay on the wagon”.
Although I didn’t realize it then, this is why I developed SpeedFiler. I wanted to clear up the clutter in my inbox, but Outlook’s user interface made it too cumbersome for someone like me, who had 600+ folders in deep hierarchies (I have since learned to let go, and now use a somewhat flatter structure). SpeedFiler made it so easy to file my messages where they belonged, that I had no excuse for letting anything drop back in the inbox once I had read it and determined how it affected my work.
My users often get rather emotional when they describe what SpeedFiler has done for them (actually, they did it themselves; SpeedFiler just acted as a catalyst), and I, too, am captivated by the passion for productivity and the sustained burst of energy that comes from getting back in life’s driving seat.
Email programs have not changed much in the past decade, but the amount of email we get has grown by a tremendous amount, significantly impacting our email productivity. The average information worker gets far more mail than s/he can cope with, and an increasing number of people suffer from "email overload". In this blog, Itzy Sabo analyzes the causes of email overload, discusses strategies to cope with the constant bombardment, and provides practical tips for getting the most out of our email programs. 
4 responses so far ↓
jeremy stieglitz // March 2, 2006 at 3:20 am
I fundamentally disagree. Email overload is, in my view, first and foremost a result of the Born Reciever Cost Dilemmna. It’s cheaper (in time, energy) to create an email than it is for all the collective recipients to read/process that email. This is the fundamental driver of SPAM, and it’s ALSO the fundamental driver of overload.
Why are we getting more email?
A. SPAM (partially fixed now)
B. More Friends/Contacts
C. More EMAIL LISTS (we’re joining more lists, or those lists are busier)
I suspect in 9/10 cases, it’s C hands down. Said another way, I know of nobody that’s getting 200-300 unique, personally specific to them emails per day, and I know thousands of people getting 200-800 LIST generated emails per day and/or notes sent to multiple people.
Technology does exist to INVERT the recipient cost. One idea that we’re forming is to create mail voting, since lots of people are on that list, and lots of people are independently concluding the same things about the same emails (junk, good, bad, archive, print, FYI only, actionable-for-john-only.), if we create a backend message bus for that knowledge, we can leverage the recipientS, so that each has less lifting to do.
In other words, if 700 people receive a limited value note, after the first 20 reads/votes, the remaining people can deprioritize that email without ever seeing it.
Over time, heuristics, tuning, learning etc. could improve who one takes and wieghts in terms of other votes. (http://amphetarate.newsfairy.com/acf-concept.php)
we’ve got an outlook trial client that’s fully peer-to-peer SSL based voting if you want to see this in action.
thougths welcome,
Jeremy
Itzy Sabo // March 2, 2006 at 8:47 am
Very interesting. I do agree that there is a place for tools. However tools alone will not prevent people feeling overloaded. Your product has the potential to reduce the amount of work-related junk we get, but unless people learn to handle email better (for instance, by not letting it interrupt everything they do and by correctly prioritizing how they handle each message) they will be working inefficiently, and will feel stressed.
Basil Choate // November 12, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Just finished reading the article on tools and email overload.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited a website that talks about tools and business email overload. It says that people are the only filter to relieve email overload from co-workers. I think I remember reading here something Gartner said about that — gave it a name like internal SPAM. Anyway, this site says they have a product that makes people filters using behavioral science. Interesting idea.
I didn’t try the product so I don’t know how it works. But the URL is http://www.rx4-email.com if you’re interested.
L’Internet des Objets » Blog Archive » Pour une écologie informationnelle // April 28, 2008 at 4:58 pm
[...] Dans le flot d’innovation continue et permanent du web, chaque nouveauté paraît une révolution. Et c’est vrai, il y en a parfois. Des petites subtilités qui changent tout, des petites applications qui nous permettent de franchir un cap, de passer un seuil, d’anodines astuces qui enchantent nos pratiques. Mais le petit monde de l’internet peut-il continuer longtemps à égrener les innovations, à rajouter chaque année sa sélection d’outils “indispensables”, son lot de nouveaux services, décalques les uns des autres, sans se poser de questions ? Il est étrange tout de même, qu’à l’heure des interfaces de programmation ouvertes, des services en plates-formes, que personne ne cherche à proposer des innovations qui puissent rendre le simple e-mail plus aisément utilisable au quotidien, qui puisse éliminer les redondances d’informations entre les outils qu’on utilise ! Il y en a bien sûr. Comme MindUp, le logiciel développé par la start-up française CalindaSoftware (vidéo), ClearContext, Claritude ou Seriosity, qui permettent de structurer les échanges dans sa messagerie électronique par exemple. Mais même pour certains de leurs promoteurs, ce ne sont que des cautères sur une jambe de bois. [...]
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