I recently realized that every single email user on the planet is heading towards a problem of the exact same kind. We are all going to have the problem of email inboxes that challenge our time management skills, and threaten us with becoming overloaded.
Here’s why.
It’s likely that with the deepening of social networking that email use (plus other kinds of messaging) will only increase. Also, as more people migrate to portable email systems, we’ll all get used to sending email at hours of the night and weekend, and will become more comfortable with sending an off-hours response.
These trends serve to encourage the use of email as a communications device, thereby increasing the volume of email that we each receive.
There is some talk, however, of creating intelligent autoresponders that tell a sender the likelihood that a sent email will be read and responded to. These tools will scan a receiver’s inbox and send back an immediate estimate.
While this kind of tool may reduce the volume of email, I doubt it will have much of an effect. I imagine that email users will merely turn the feature off, once it starts to broadcast a message to the world that indicates “how poor a time manager I am.”
It’s more likely, I think that there will be some that manage email well, and the majority that don’t. Perhaps there will be a revolution in the way we manage email in which we all learn a set of habits (such as the 11 fundamentals presented in 2Time) that help us to deal with the upcoming deluge. Perhaps methods of managing email will be taught in schools and time management will be understood as a critical skill to any kind of success, much in the way that math is seen as essential.
I hope!
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The biggest problem with email is something that no tool can fix: it’s asynchronous, and therefore ignorable. When you walk up to a coworker to ask something, he has to either answer you, or offer an alternative response (“I’m busy now”). Since there’s no socially agreed upon response time for email, there’s no way to prove the recipient is blowing you off — in principle, no answer is more polite than a negative answer.
Unless the recipient has consistently demonstrated an acceptable turnaround time, I would suggest sending email without assuming it’s being read. Track needed responses on a Waiting For list, or tag/file the initial message with a similar label, noting the date the message was issued/
I don’t think email is going to get easier ever, but I don’t think a filter like you describe will appear for most of us. Email simply replaced all the paper mail we used to get and often still get.
I started treating email like paper mail. I go over the new messages first with a mental junk mail (spam) filter. I mark all spam that is spam.
Then I go through the messages remaining for email that I don’t have to read and delete it immediately.
Then I go through the remaining messages and deal with each, whether they need a response, are FYI or whatever and file what I need to keep.
I also use this opportunity to unsubscribe from any list that isn’t relevant to me right now. I used to file that stuff for later, but realized later will never come. I unsubscribe and focus on what I need to work on now. I get relatively little personal email from people I actually know, so getting through messages is pretty easy for now.
The thing that’s starting to eat my time the most is having 3 mailboxes I have to actively monitor. Two are easy, but the third requires a log-out and another log-in to a different account. I need to find a technology solution for that Google problem. I think there is a Firefox addon for it. I’ll have to check. Once I get that problem solved, email will be a lot more manageable for me.
Overflowing email is just a symptom of the clutter (and excess) we have in the rest of our lives. By paring down our responsibilities and “acquaintances” to what we can handle the email volume will be manageable.
Summy — that’s true, but it’s so very easy to bite off more than we can chew…!
I think that people don’t look at the things they choose to do, and instead focus on the email that comes as a result of their choices. Then they blame the sender…
I have had people blame me for sending them too much email, but they are the ones who signed up for different information products and they always have the option of decided to discontinue what they are receiving.
I think the mindset of “getting more” is different from the mindset of “limit the inputs so my life is more manageable.” The latter is more difficult to implement.
Andre — is the asynchronicity of email a problem, or a feature?
I agree that often email that is sent can disappear into the mist, and there are no programs that I know of that will prompt a user if an expected reply is not received. What a GREAT feature that would be!
I use a software called Promisystem that does what we are talking about with respect to promises that are made between people. It requires a very different way of thinking that’s not too hard to learn, but it effectively supplements email by managing the essential promises in a separate database.
Home Office Org’er,
I believe there are quite a few solutions that you can use to consolidate email inboxes. In the language of 2Time, it’s a way of putting all your Capture points together, which is a simple way of ensuring your peace of mind.
Great post, Francis!
Unfortunately, I only see things getting worse, for the reasons you mention. And hoping schools will catch and teach students how to manage the onslaught is, I hate to say it, very wishful thinking. Our schools, at all levels, do poorly at teaching students time management skills – we recognize the problem but don’t know how to fix it, as educators are often behind the technological curve to start with.
Pessimistic? Perhaps. But I think we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg as the whole world gets online.
On the flip side, I guess it’s job security for those of us trying to help people tame the Inbox!