That email mountain…
Debbie Weil writes in the Guardian about one way to deal with an overload of email. Well, we all face it to some extent, don’t we?
Two bloggers in the US have declared themselves ’email bankrupt.’ Fred Wilson declared: ‘I am so far behind on email that I am declaring bankruptcy. If you’ve sent me an email (and you aren’t my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.’ This received a lot of sympathetic comments and it is instructive to read the number of suggestions on how to manage becoming ’email bankrupt’. Jeff Nolan then declared bankruptcy as well, saying ‘I am going back to voice communication as my primary mechanism for interacting with people.’
Personally, I am an advocate of speed reading. It’s fairly clear very quickly whether an email is important or not. After dealing with email for 10 years, I also have a sixth sense for spam from just the title.
I also filter all my regular newsletters into dedicated folders to read when I have time, and have a labyrinthine system of email folders in which everything gets stored, regularly. Oh – and I archive my email. With Outlook it’s quite easy to load and search your email archive on a CD. I’ll let you know whether it works with other email programs..
I would like to invite you to comment on your top tip for surviving the email avalanche. Your good deed for the day – share with those of us in dreadful ’email debt’.
Meanwhile if anyone has a way to resist checking your email every time you pass your computer, I’d love to hear it!