Email overload is an ever-growing problem, as email message volumes increase and we remain unable to manage our emails in a productive, time-efficient way. This article offers tips on dealing with your email messages and getting back in control of your inbox.
Marshall McLuhan, that prescient social commentator, once said: "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." This has never been more true than in the case of email and the way we have allowed it to shape our working lives.
From its origins as an effective corporate messaging tool, email has mushroomed. It is not unusual for a 21st century executive to receive several hundred email messages a day.
Because we often use email inappropriately within our organisations – whether through copying email messages too widely or "flaming" our colleagues via email – it can soak up an enormous amount of time and effort. Research by Christina Kavanagh at the University of Toronto suggests that as much as 12% of an organisation's payroll is spent just on the inefficient use of email.
Emails: a growing and troubling addiction
Mobile technology and the advent of the BlackBerry and other PDAs mean that we are now able to send and receive emails almost regardless of time and location. As a result, the compulsion to check for new email messages has become so widespread that people commonly talk of BlackBerry "addiction", with some naming the device the "CrackBerry".
A 2008 survey by AOL found that 67% of respondents checked email messages while in bed, 59% did so while in the bathroom, and – perhaps most worryingly of all – 50% admitted to checking their email messages while driving.
Combine this with the Wall Street Journal's coinage of the term "BlackBerry Orphans" to describe children whose parents are glued to their devices, and we see a growing trend that is worrying for personal quality of life as well as for resilience and effectiveness at work.
How can you deal with email overload?
The problem of email overload has a two-part solution. Firstly, there are things that you can control as an individual. Secondly, there are organisational steps that, with the right support from the leadership, can limit the ineffective use of email.
As an individual, you can try the following to manage your email:
- To manage your email more effectively, deal with it in focused
bouts rather than as each email message comes in.
- Perhaps devote an hour at the beginning and end of each day to
managing your email. Try to take a "one-touch" approach
so that you deal with each email message immediately by deleting,
delegating, archiving or acting upon it.
- Turn off all indicators of new emails so that you can focus on
other output while at your desk.
- Aim to keep your email inbox down to the level where you can
see the bottom: this is about 30 email messages. You will find this
hugely liberating.
Of course, as an individual, you are not necessarily in control of what email messages others in your organisation send you. An effective approach is to agree with your colleagues and leaders that you will put together a "code" to help drive down the ineffective use of email. This code might include the following:
- Agree that you will have no such thing as an "urgent" email. For anything urgent, use the phone or face-to-face contact. This will reduce the need to check constantly for new email messages.
- Establish a limit for out-of-hours email messaging so that people will not feel the urge to send emails when they are away from work.
- Agree also to avoid the use of email messages for the sorts of conversation that are more suited to face-to-face or phone discussions. These include subjects that may be difficult or adversarial, or just plain complicated. Email is not the right medium for these discussions; nor is email right for anything negative.
Putting these rules in place – and adhering to them – will help put email back where it belongs, to play its part as a powerful communications tool.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
