Slashdot Mirror
E-Mail Addiction 12-Steps Stumbles
netbuzz writes "Talk about offering an alcoholic a drink? No. 2 of 12-step program for e-mail addiction: "Commit to keeping your inbox empty." ... Reuters is reporting today on this program from an executive coach. Here are 11 other reasons why it won't work." I know what the bottom of my inbox looks like, I just only get to see it for a few minutes a year.
The 12 steps really seem more along the lines of, "12 steps to managing your e-mail more efficiently" rather than breaking any habits. At the same time, they don't increase e-mail checking efficiency. In fact, half of them don't even seem to be steps.
However, there's a deep question here. Who the heck includes multiple subjects in one e-mail? Even with spambots I've never seen "Re: The backyard/fiscal policy".
So weird.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
A large portion of the time spent on many people's email is deleting & weeding through SPAM, and if you didn't get a single piece of spam, you'd spend a lot less time in your inbox...and what time you did spend would be productive.
Don't organize, just file everything in one folder. Use 'Search' to find everything/anything. a massive nest of folder's just gives you more places to have to search.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Or just start to realize that you recieve roughly ZERO mails a year that need a 2-minute response.
Honestly; if people want 2-minute responses, why would they use a medium that most people don't checks every 2 minutes. Use the phone!
Are you really willing to say that the maximum time between sitting at your desk, walking to the toilet, taking a dump then returning to your desk is 2 minutes? Are all your company meetings 2 minutes? Do you take 2-minute lunchbreaks? Do you ever sleep, have weekends, vacations for less than 2 minutes? Do you make love within 2 minutes? Actually, don't answer that last one; this is slashdot afterall.
If you're addicted to e-mail, you're probably thinking people cannot do without your response. You're wrong.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Set a 5-second delay on "read" marker, use the five seconds to trash the junk and/or mark the spam, have your mail client auto-move the rest of your read messages to a "read" folder, filter on subject/list/whatever from there. No extensions needed.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Yes there is, GmailUI. I'm NOT suggesting GMail. The name of this Thunderbird extension is GMailUI because it adds several GMail features to Thunderbird, including making the y key move the current email to an archive folder.
How the hell do you create a file for mails?
Idiotic "executive coaches" should learn the difference between a file and a folder before advising and devising programs.
If you are in the "executive" category, the only step you need is:
1. Hire human(s)-email filter/secretary. Don't hire consultants.
I have a little icon (Gmail notify) that sits in the system tray that is red when I have no unread messages and blue when there are unread messages. When a message comes in it pops up on the screen the subject who its from and the first few words of the email. I set up filters so that non-urgent stuff gets labelled and archived without bugging me.
Is constantly checking my email a problem when checking email is just glancing an inch to the right of the clock at the top of my screen? Usually when I actually go to my inbox I already know whats there because I saw the popup when it came in.
And if you don't like GMail there's similar solutions available. Its really not hard to get the best of both worlds, keeping on top of your emails without having to spend a lot of time constantly checking it.
Because executives have never heard of folders? Those beige-colored pieces of light cardboard that are folded around documents before placing them in the filing cabinet?
Great points. And as someone who recently read GTD, and decided to give cleaning out my 4000+ email inbox a shot, it's honestly one of the first times that i've felt seriously on top of everything I need to do in a long time. Turning off the notifications and putting my blackberry on "silent" mode for incoming messages was crucial to this.
What I've found is that responding immediately to constant interrupts only serves to reinforce the notion among my co-workers that I'm constantly interruptible (This may sound like a "No shit, sherlock" moment, but it really is something you lose sight of when you're constantly being interrupted). Only checking my inbox once every hour or two and turning off all the beeps & notifications has worked wonders on my ability to focus & get things done, and it's also helped to break my co-workers of the notion that they can interrupt me at any moment they feel it's necessary.