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A New Tool to Help Manage E-Mail Overload
By Richard Nantel | August 21, 2008
Dealing with e-mail can be like shoveling in a snow storm. Reply to 10 e-mails, press the Send and Retrieve icon, and 15 more arrive. Answer those and 20 more roll in. If you have an empty inbox, you’re likely unemployed.
To handle this flood of messages, many people keep their e-mail application open at all times; replying to messages as they come in. They become addicted to their e-mail. The result is that their workday never includes uninterrupted blocks of time to focus on tasks that require reflection and concentration.
This type of workday is unproductive and demoralizing. In addition, research indicates it’s bad for brain health. A better solution is to schedule replying to e-mail for specific times of the day, be disciplined about replying to urgent messages first, and leave blocks available to do actual focused work.
Because of the volume of messages we need to deal with, a fundamental skill all knowledge workers need is the ability to manage e-mail. New tools are beginning to appear to help workers acquire these skills. TechDirt writes about one such tool, HitMeLater. Just forward any e-mail to a special address and the service will send it back to you as a reminder on the date and time you determine.
What a great idea. Gone are the dozens of items I have flagged for follow up. I’m sold.
Topics: E-mail, GTD, Learning, Productivity |
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] about this on my personal blog. [...]
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:01 am
I like the idea… but I’m not sold actually.
What I didn’t like about it is that I will gather a bunch of “1@hitmelater.com” emails in my outbox.
Also, when the email came back, the sender was HitMeLater[noreply@hitmelater.com] and so I can’t just hit reply… I have to go find the original email? I’m not sure at this point how this is helping me…
I’m afraid some of my clients might worry about confidentiality.
Also, I find it would take me more time to select the appropriate email address then to put a flag… no?
And what if their servers go down… then you don’t get hit later?
I’ve actually divised a system that lets me manage email really, really well. I get lots. I mean tons.
My trick is the minute I get email from someone who I think I might get email from again (which is about 75% of the time), I create a folder and a filter for them. That way, I have a visual representation of who is sending me emails.
For example, all the emails that come from groups of interests, notifications of comments on my blogs, etc all go into a set of folders called “Networking”. In busy times, I can ignore that folder. Also, I have a sub-folder called “Networking keepers” where I transfer any email that I want to keep. Otherwise, the Networking folder gets emptied regularly, which trims down the *.PST file!
And then there are the client folders, each client a folder. Those are the ones I’m most attentive too. When I’m working on a project, especially with tight deadlines, I’ll even add a flad to the filter. In fact, with one client in particular, because I do a lot of work for her and because all her emails require a response, there is automatically a flag set up for follow-up.
I guess the most important is to find a way that works for us.
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August 25th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Kristina,
Thanks for sharing your productivity tips regarding e-mail. I tried folders for individuals but abandoned that. The problem was that if I couldn’t recall who had sent me information about a topic, it would take me forever to find the message.
What works better for me are folders for projects or business functions:
* Marketing
* Publications > LMS
* Publications > Mobile learning
* etc.
This is similar to what you’re doing with projects and clients.
Regarding HitMeLater, I’m not using this service to be reminded to reply to an e-mail. I’ve been using it to be reminded of tasks I need to complete. I also have the task added to my iGoogle task list so this just provides additional nagging.
BTW, I was toying with using Gmail for my business e-mail (already use it for personal) and found an odd bug that made some of my replies disappear. I plan to blog about this this week.