Dealing with information overload - email  |  October 20, 2009  

In the October IEEE Spectrum there was an article on How to Beat Information Overload.that I found very timely since, during this past week, there were a number of cases where I saw a question go out to a distribution list asking for technical insight and numerous answers coming back using "reply all", followed (enviably) by numerous people using reply all to say "stop using reply all".

I personally don't mind that much when the answers come back with a "reply all" since many times I am as interested in the answer as I am with the question. I do get disturbed with the folks who say "take me off this list" or "stop using reply all" while using "reply all". My view is "that's why most modern mail readers have rules and filters". If you don't want to see the answer "take care of it yourself". It's not like the other mail wasn't useful and addressing the question being asked. But the follow-up attempt at self-selection definitely serves no business purpose. I've thought about writing an auto-reply rule for this but that might be considered a DoS. ;-)

I easily receive 200-300 emails a day and now have a significant hierarchy of rules to sort and filter email into categories that I get to:

• junk - skim through once a week
• once a week
• once a day
• as soon as possible
• immediately - these I have sent to my phone as well as an instant message

These capabilities are available to everyone (at least where I work) so people should learn to use them. I've thought about writing a white paper on the topic, just because it is so annoying.

Unfortunately, my once a week pile has lately grown to being over 1000 email messages a week and that takes a chunk out of my weekend to address. On the other hand, using this technique has helped me be more focused during the week. There is no free lunch.

I've thought about trying to have a "no e-mail" day (hey, the federal government does it all the time with regular mail) or even limit myself to 20 outgoing emails a day but part of my job is to communicate with others and so that doesn't seem prudent.

This article goes on to talk about similar corporate activities where there are "no e- mail" times during the day or other techniques where people can try to limit their disruptions. Unfortunately, this may point to an issue where IT is viewed as not having target=_blank any value for the organization or at least interfering with value creation.

I guess the point I am trying to get across is that we all need to be responsible for our own attention span and not just try to put the blame on others.

Charlie Bess
The Next Big Thing blog