TechCrunch
king Michael Arrington recently revealed through his blog that he
has more than 2,400 unread e-mails in his inbox and an additional 721 unread
messages in his Facebook inbox. No, that's not a typo. He has more than 2,000
unread messages. What's the world coming to if the technological elite can't
keep up?
Arrington isn't alone, not by a long shot. Every day entrepreneurs carry the
psychic weight of thousands of unanswered e-mails. Not only are they are missing
out on untold opportunities by being unresponsive, they are in a constant
state of heightened stress, panic and guilt because they're worried about those
unanswered e-mails.
Spinning Out of Control
Donald Rubin (not his real name) is the CEO of a
software firm and a venture capital professional. Rubin confesses to having
14,651 unread messages in his inbox, 1,535 of which have been flagged as
important.
Rubin, a technologist himself, has tried to use technology to manage the
problem, to no avail. He has activated all available spam filter options,
resulting in what amounts to an exclusive whitelist, and he filters his e-mail
automatically through 88 separate rules, 102 individual folders and three dozen
project folders. He still ends up with more than 150 e-mails in his main inbox
every day.
Rubin's sentiment about the situation says it all: "I'm a really sick puppy.
Some day I'm gonna get out of this crazy business and go live on a desert island
with no internet connection!"
Although Rubin was talking tongue-in-cheek, many entrepreneurs really do want
to bail on e-mail. But declaring e-mail bankruptcy--a process of deleting
everything in your inbox and starting fresh--isn't an option. So many business
professionals have developed customized systems for stemming the tide.
Consuelo C. Bova, CEO of online clothing retailer
ForTheFit.com, has struck
gold by sorting e-mail messages alphabetically by sender and deleting entire
blocks of unwanted messages originating from the same source (such as spam or
marketing messages). This allows her to identify multiple messages or requests
from the same person that can all be addressed in one reply.
"It's a quick way to categorize and clear my inbox and get it back down to
manageable numbers, and it only takes a few minutes once a week to do," Bova
says.
What the Experts Say
An abounding number of productivity experts offer great
approaches to alleviating e-mail overload.
Timothy Ferriss, author of
The Four-Hour Work
Week, teaches the readers of his book and popular blog how to get to the
point where they check e-mail once every 10 days. He suggests sending a short
note to your network and setting up an autoresponder. These would inform people
that you only check e-mail every 10 days and explain how to reach you in the
interim. Ferriss actually walks the talk on this. I know Ferriss and, depending
on when you send him e-mail, it does take him two weeks to get back to you.
Other experts are not as radical. David Allen, author of
Getting Things Done, presents a thought- and idea-management system to
help business owners and executives "get to zero," which means nothing in your
inbox and no ideas floating around in your head that are unrecorded to-dos. With a combination of specialized to-do lists, and daily and weekly
processes, Allen's system slices through mounds of messages like a Ginsu knife.
Of course, there are software solutions, such as the newly released
Email Center Pro by
Palo Alto Software. Email Center Pro addresses the challenges many small
businesses face responding to, managing, assigning and tracking e-mail that
comes into general inboxes like sales@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com.
However, according to Mark Hurst, author of
Bit Literacy and the
creator of web-based to-do management system
GooToDo, many solutions
fail to address the core issue of e-mail overload.
"This is a relatively recent change. In years before the internet and e-mail
became popular, people would have memos and to-do lists, but no one ever had an
inbox filled with 35,000 pieces of paper. And yet that's unfortunately a pretty
common occurrence today," Hurst says.
Many productivity gurus have approaches to offer, but none of them really
meets the problem of digital overload head-on.
"Timothy Ferriss is focused on outsourcing and not checking e-mail so often.
The last time I checked, the amount of e-mail you get is not a function of how
often you check e-mail," Hurst says. "David Allen's approach is a bit of a
throwback to a pre-internet age when having complex flowcharts, filing papers
and creating tickler items was relevant.
"People need to learn how to let the bits go and do a better job of managing
their to-do lists. Digital overload isn't a function of too much e-mail; it's a
product of not managing your action items appropriately," Hurst says.
Hurst must be doing something right. When I sent him an e-mail about being
interviewed for this article, he responded within 20 minutes.
The Last Word on E-mail
E-mail overload isn't going to be spontaneously
solved by installing software or adopting one guru's approach. The right
solution for you may not be the best solution for someone else. Because of that,
addressing the issue takes trial and error.
When one system doesn't work, try another until you find an approach that
works for you--whether the solution is process, software or a combination of the
two. E-mail is here to stay, and we all have to figure out what works for us
individually.
