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Putting Emails In Folders Is a Waste of Time, Says IBM Study

Posted by timothy on Sunday October 9, 2011 @03:11PM from the perhaps-the-sorting-process-is-useful-though dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There are two types of office workers in the world — those who file their emails in folders, and those who use search. Well, it looks like the searchers are smarter. A 354-user study by IBM research found that users who just searched their inbox found emails slightly faster than users who had filed them by folder. Add the time spent filing and the searchers easily come out on top. Apparently the filers are using their inbox as a to-do list rather than wanting to categorize information to find it more easily."

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Was the test done with Lotus Notes? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-09 15:15 · Score: 2, Funny

Because I'm sure that wouldn't skew the results from people gouging out their eyeballs.
Re:Except that... by ColdWetDog · 2011-10-09 16:02 · Score: 4, Funny

This is why I have one folder called "work stuff" where everything I save goes.
Mine's called 'Trash'. Works really well.

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Get off my lawn? by peppepz · 2011-10-09 17:17 · Score: 3, Funny

So, folders are a waste of time. The ribbon user interface is cool. Walled gardens are OK.
I must be getting very old.
Re:Except that... by MichaelSmith · 2011-10-09 21:20 · Score: 3, Funny

My wife kept clicking Junk in apple mail to delete messages after she had read them, then asked me why she never saw any new messages.

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