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Dr Monica Seeley - 353 found.Email Overload is a major contributor to information overload. Today is the annual Information Overload Day. This event was initiated by Basex who have just posted some data on the staggering cost of information overload. Did you know that for every hundred people who are unnecessarily copied into emails we lose eight hours?
We are swamped by information from RSS feed, daily newsletters and social networking updates (many of which come by email) and everyday emails from colleagues and friends. Just as we like to think we can multi-task and still be productive, we think we can handle all this Email Overload.
When I meet people at networking events and give my elevator pitch about what I do, the instant reaction is often, ‘I simply delete all the unwanted emails’. But that in itself just adds to the time and energy wasted because you still have to use precious time and brain power to scan the list of incoming emails to know what to delete. That is an appalling yet avoidable waste of time. Deleting 20 emails a day which you really did not need wastes up to 30 minutes a day. Who can afford such indiscriminate waste in the current economic climate?
Information and email overload carries significant health warning to us as individuals through distorted work-life balance and our business as key emails are missed in the morass of unwanted ones.
To check what email overload is costing you use our ‘Cost of Email Overload’ Calculator.
Based on the premise that your inbox is your work in progress (action tray), here is my three point plan to reduce information overload by being far more selective about what emails drop into your inbox.
1) Prioritise each email which arrives over the next few days. Triage them according to the usefulness to use:
2) For all ‘nice to know’ emails – set up rules to move them automatically to folders for reading (action) later.
3) For all ‘no use’ emails – remove yourself from the senders distribution list. If they come from a specific friend/colleague tell them what you are doing. Enlist them in the campaign against information overload by taking you off their circulation list!
This will help you save time and reduce the level of information overload you endure and hence enable you to be more productive.
To further fight the information overload battle try our Nine Ps of Smart Email.
Email overload is often casued by email addiction. During the recent BlackBerry outage reports flooded in of staff that were stressed and angry by the lack of email, and felt unable to work. These are the classic withdrawal symptoms of an addict.
Dear Blackberry users – isn’t it time to assess your email addiction? Email addiction is a major cause of email overload. Are you feeling stressed out by the lack of your instant quick fix of emails? Feeling you can no longer function properly and worse still do business (as some people are reporting). This is all nonsense.
This Blackberry outage should be a wake-up call for us all to reassess just how addicted we have become to email, because we can all survive without constant instant access to our email 24x7x365. We would probably be significantly more productive. We just like to think its macho and makes us look important to be attached by the Blackberry (or iphone) umbilical cord to our email.
The lack of constant interruptions from the Blackberry buzz could have many positive effects such as reigniting our strategic thinking and improving meetings as people stop multi-tasking. We could start to review some processes which have developed through our email addiction rather than as a result of thinking through what is best for the business.
To check just how addicted you and your business have become use our Email Addiction benchmarking tool. Click here to download it. For a ten point plan to cure it see January 31st – Email addiction ways to cure it and February 2nd – Email addiction – more tips and hints.
Whatever you do, just make sure you seize the moment to re-evaluate your life-work balance and how you can actually be more productive by freeing yourself from the the Blackberry umbilical cord.
Tags: email addiction, email overload
Email chains are a major cause of email overload. You know the symptoms:
Then there is the corollary – people who feel left out and feel they should be included. Take a look and see what percentage of the emails in your inbox relate to a thread/chain? How many of the iterations do you really need? Probably less then 25%. Little wonder email overload is on the increase.
Email chains seem to be the bane of most people’s life at the inbox. There are several ways to manage these more successfully which range from personal email management techniques to better use of the software. Here are the top three, some of which were in our October 2011 ‘ebriefing’ on tips to help you overcome email overload and use brilliant email etiquette to save time.
The key is to stop the email chain once it gets out of hand and re-assess just what you are trying to achieve and who really needs to make an input.
During the week there will be more tips on managing email chains.
Tags: email best practice, email chains, email overload
Steve Jobs was the epitome of a great entrepreneur and inventor. His vision and creativity changed the personal computing landscape. He was a genius and has quite rightly been likened to Edison and Ford. He was the Einstein of the world of computing. Geniuses like Jobs emerge very occasionally.
The disruptive change he wrought in the personal computing industry is best summed up by his own words:
‘it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show them.’
His perfectionism and ability to step outside the box meant that Apple’s products were beautifully designed and their tactile aura made you want to hold and use them.’
He created new and exciting products with the ipod, iphone and ipad. With the Apple Mac he made computing truly accessible to people. Who could fail to love their PC when they used a Mac?
What else did he contribute to society? The spin off from his inventions brought employment as Apple expanded. There was wealth for those who invested in Apple and those who worked with Apple.
Some regard him as one if not the founding father of social networking, for whilst Apple did not have the social networking platforms like Facebook, they did provide the tools to make social networking readily available.
Job’s full contribution to society is still unfolding and the sum will only become clear in the years ahead.
Steve Jobs will be sadly missed by those who worked with him and those like myself who enjoyed the fruits of his creativity.