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.

Email is for instant-messaging.

Every ten minutes? I've got Gmail open in its own tab [photobucket.com]. The moment I get an email, I know.

I've been described as the guy who "turns email into an instant-messaging system." I just wish Slashdot comment reply notification emails were sent out as they happened, instead of in batches every five minutes.

Re:Email is for instant-messaging.

I've been described as the guy who "turns email into an instant-messaging system."

I coined the phrase "mail-chatting" for that behaviour back in 1996 and been happily addicted since. :-P

This is just GTD

Empty Inbox
Anything under 2 minutes do it

Yadda yadda

Re:This is just GTD

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.

Re:This is just GTD

And this is the exact reason for the existence of the crackberry and its analogues. Some people consider it essential that any of their messages get through to you now and immediately and you read them regardless of what you are doing at the moment. This is generally the same type of people who forget that freedom of speech actually includes the freedom of not to listen. These are also the same kind of people who cannot comprehend the importance of being able to work without interruption. Hence, here is my simple program for beating email addiction (it will not work for all workflows though):

• Change your workflow to read your email only at fixed intervals at fixed times during the day devoting the rest to doing work. Ensure that you are managing your time, and not email.
• Turn off instant notifications, toolbar email status, cretinberries and analogues.
• Once you have seen what gets missed when doing so create suitable notifications for the really important stuff that cannot and should not be missed. Make sure that important means only events that actually alter your schedule and not every email coming in.
• Rinse, repeat until you get yourself up to 80%+ doing scheduled work instead of interrupt driven one.

Once you have succeeded in this you have beaten your addiction. Been there, done that.

Re:This is just GTD

An easy way I found to use automatic rules to sort my email:

• Anything sent only to me is much more likely to be something I have been waiting for, or something I would want to respond to quickly, so I usually read these right away, even if I don't end up responding right away. Of course, I'm not one of those people who gets email from potential clients, readers, fans, etc.
• If my name is in the "To" box, but I'm not the only one, I set aside a few different times during the day to read those.
• Anything sent to a mailing list or where I'm only CCed, I only read once a day, and frequently just delete after reading the subject line.
• I ignore the "important" flag, except for people I know don't abuse it, like the system administrator who only uses it for stuff like emergency reboots.
• I don't check personal email accounts at work.

I've found this allows me to be interrupted when I want to be interrupted, but to make the interruptions minimal. Sometimes, I make specific rules for specific situations, but most of the time, these generic rules work great.

Re:This is just GTD

Huh? I think you miss the point on what the 2 minute rule in GTD is.

The 2 minute rule says that when you process your inbox (any inbox, e.g. e-mail, physical, voicemail), and the result is that you should do something (as oppsed to delegate, file for reference or just plain delete), you should do it immediately. If, on the other hand, the action will take longer than 2 minutes, you should file it in your trusted system and continue emptying your inbox.

The 2 minute rule most definitely does *not* say that you should ever be expected to answer any e-mail within 2 minutes, for exactly the reasons you list.

I thought every computer geek worth his salt knew about all about GTD by now, but from your post and the moderation of it, I see that that's not the case.

I tried GTD...

It takes me 3 minutes to figure out if something will take me less than 2 minutes to do, so I get a deadlock. The only real solution is writing post-its on a whiteboard.

Re:I tried GTD...

Post it's kill trees. To be more environmentally friendly, maybe you should send yourself an email about it.

Re:I tried GTD...

It takes me 3 minutes to figure out if something will take me less than 2 minutes to do, so I get a deadlock. The only real solution is writing post-its on a whiteboard.

As with most things, people like to nitpick the fine details as a way of criticizing the whole.

As a fairly new GTD user, I've discovered that much of GTD is meant to be used as guidelines or strategies, not divine commands from on high. The important principles of GTD are:

1) Collect all of the unfinished tasks and projects in your life ("open loops" in GTD parlance).
2) Go through that collection and decide what needs to be done with each open loop:
      * Can it be done right now, in 2 minutes or less? If so, do it.
      * If not, can you delegate it to someone else? If so, do so.
      * If not, what's the "Next Action" (more GTD jargon) that needs to be done, either to finish it or to move it to the next step?
3) Keep track of your Next Actions in a trusted system -- notebook, PDA, text files, whatever -- so you know what needs to be done when you have time to do it.
4) Once you know what all needs to be done, you are capable of making informed decisions as to what you should be doing at any given moment. (To me, this is the most significant point of GTD.)

If you can make those principles work, the details are negotiable. If it takes you more than two minutes to figure out what needs to be done and your incoming traffic and workload permits it, set the threshold to 5 minutes. The GTD book itself usually describes seveal methods of approaching a step.

This is what drives websites like Lifehacker [lifehacker.com] and 43 Folders [43folders.com]; people are sharing things that work for them or pointing out new things that can be used to implement GTD or otherwise improve personal productivity.

(Yes, I know that parent was probably just trying to be funny. But I still wanted to throw my two cents out for people who haven't tried GTD, or tried and haven't been able to make it work.)

Jay (=

They're good suggestions actually.

Perhaps the article is mr. McNamara's poor attempt at humour, but most of those 12 points are actually very good suggestions to help manage your email... If you're stressed because you get too many items in your inbox (or more probably, if you think you're getting too many mails), they'll help a lot. Perhaps they're not so good for overcoming an actual addiction though. For that, step 1 and some discipline is enough.

Most of these tips come from Getting things done [amazon.com], which I can highly recommend if you're stressed out because you feel you have more work than you can manage. It worked wonders for me!

Wow.

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.

Re: Single Subject per Message

I guess you haven't met practitioners of the SuperFootnote. The trick is they only have 1 subject in the header, but as last-minute item tacked on below.

P.S. Did you see the Vista article in the Register a couple threads below this?

and remember...

There really isn't a king in Nigeria that left his fortune to you, so just don't bother.

What about spam?

It's interesting that the 12 steps don't mention anything about mitigating or reducing SPAM... seems like it should be step 0 to me.

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.

Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension...

for transferring mail to an archive folder that can be mapped to a keystroke?

Right now I have a trash box that is a zillion emails long - I use it as an archive and a trashcan at the same time. What I really want is an archive box that I can hit a key (hey, how 'bout that scroll lock key?) to send my "real" archive emails to, and use the delete key for the actual trash? I suspect it's out there, but sifting through the extensions on the mozilla page is almost as much fun as chewing sand.

Oh, and please don't suggest gmail.

Re:Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension..

Yes there is, GmailUI [longshot.com]. 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.

They Missed the Point

2. Commit to keeping your inbox empty. What am I missing? I'm already committed to keeping my inbox empty. I'm so committed to keeping my inbox empty that I'm checking my e-mail more often than hibernating animals breathe. I don't need more commitment. I need to be committed.

They missed the point on this, Reuters meant you should just press Ctrl-A followed by the Del key to keep your inbox empty. This has even been proven to work against e-mails from sloping-shouldered middle management, bonus!

Don't Organize

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.

Where's the religion?

This 12-step program is missing the essential step: "Accept Shub-Internet [ccil.org] as your personal Savior."

My last employer insisted on this

We had a clear desk policy which was extended to email - not by force, but I was asked to get my inbox down to nothing.

Solution: Set up a folder called "Not Inbox" and a rule to automatically push all incoming email to that.

I was able to honestly say that my inbox was completely empty.

Re:My last employer insisted on this

Better yet, label your new INBOX as 'EMPTY'
Then you can always say, my inbox is EMPTY.

(probably depends on what the meaning of is is)

But if I don't check my email constantly

I might miss out on all these job offers I am getting from all over the world. All I have to do is cash checks and I get 10% of the profits, and I only had to give them my contact info, SSN, account numbers and passwords. What suckers!

Wrong addiction

Forget email...what about a 12 step program for my wife's World of Warcrack addiction?

Re:Wrong addiction

phone your provider and tell them to cut off you internet connection. Don't tell her. When it gets cut off freak out and phone the provider, have a big fight and at the end say "No way don't even bother I'm not dealing with you again" and then hang up. Tell your wife that she will have to go without internet until you are able to find a company that isn't a bunch of assholes. When she leaves to go to the internet cafe down the street call the lock smith, and change the locks. When she gets back make her cancle her WOW subscription and hand over her credit cards. You might have to wait her out on that one but it should work.

Why assume email is bad?

... or at least that email is overused? That case has to be proven. People use email because they want to and expect each other to.

Frankly, I much prefer email to voicemail. Live phone calls are better for some subjects, but worse for others.

10 suggestions

I think reuters is right, most of the suggestions are pretty worthless.

How about these suggestions:

1) If you are getting email that is routine (for archive purposes), setup scripts to auto file them.

2) Remove your email address from any webpages where it isn't absolutely needed.

3) Change your email address! It may sound harsh, but a fresh start will surely curb your email intake, send your new address out to only the people you MUST stay in touch with. The people who HAVE to contact you will make a call or get your new email some way.

4) Only reply if asked to or it is absolutely necessary. A lot of email is simple yes, or haha comments, which are pretty much worthless and are only wasting yours and others time.

5) If you do reply stay on topic and keep it short as possible, if it is long or complicated this is why will still have those things called phones.

6) Automatically delete and never forward any of those chain letters or joke emails, what a waste of time and bandwidth those things are.

7) If you don't think you are going to reply or dont want to reply within the next 24 hours to an email just delete it, otherwise it will pile up and create a psycological burden for you.

8) Have a good SPAM filter.

9) Setup an autoreply for common questions you get asked.

10) It sounds simple but setup a signature, no point in wasting your time typing your name or website address.

5. "... create a file for mails..."

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.

Ummm...

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.

Let Rules Help You

The only way I could make sense of my inbox was to look at all the people who routinely send me stuff.

Then, I created a folder for each person and setup an inbox rule (easy in KMail or Outlook) to move the message to a tingle-table folder based on each person.

At work this keeps my inbox clear almost all-day long, and I can quickly get to the people I need to reply to quickly, and let all the personal/jokes/riffraff and autoresponders gather dust until I login late at night from home and read it.

When I am REALLY busy and don't want distraction, I just close my email reader completely and forward my extension to my (turned off) cell phone.

Walk-ups to my desk get a very grumpy face and a "I am really busy, it will have to wait" response.

I don't have an inbox

I just read the packets as they come in on port 25.

Email time-savers?

Am I the only one that sees the irony in a bunch of /. posts discussing how best to save time on email? It's like an alcoholic giving advice on giving up coffee, cause, you know, caffeine is bad for you.

I sent her an e-mail...

I just sent Marsha Egan an e-mail telling her how dumb her suggestions/steps were. And in reality, that's exactly what they are... dumb. I also offered to produce new websites for her though. =)

My inbox is empty...

...I just copied them all to read.

Now I have an empty inbox and a read mail folder with 25,656 mails in it.

One of these days I should get round to sorting the read mail.

Email abuse.

A few years ago, during the months leading to the first wave of spam attacks, I started receiving a lot of chain-letter emails, along the lines of "send this message to ten (or twenty or whatever) people you know, and something wonderful will happen to you within the next week". Sometimes it was some .pps with a bogus Dalai Lama message, sometimes just a selfish attempt by the superstitious to score points with some fortune deity.
One time, to my astonishment, it was just a list of email addresses upon addresses, hundreds of them, no message included, being sent and resent by who knows what idiots. One fed up guy replied to the original sender and to all of us hapless sendees, ripping the sender a new one, it was a sight to behold.

Once I switched to Gmail, I was much warier of giving out my address, emphasizing "Do NOT send any crap, okay?" It worked for more than a year, but then I started receiving another kind of chain-letter email, of the scaremongering urban-legend variety, you know the type, a nameless friend of a friend of a friend went drinking, ended up bedding a hot chick, then woke up two days later in some hotel room, blind and missing his corneas, or a kidney or whatever.
Or another round of .pps files, this time smearing political candidates or explaining electoral fraud step by step, calling upon you to do something immediately about it, such as, you guessed it, "resend this email to ten (or twenty or whatever) people you know". The result is that I'm getting flooded by spam again, but thankfully the Gmail filters seem to be holding up quite well.

It's email abuse, pure and simple, but they don't see it that way, as they think they're doing a public service. Even the top brass of the company I work for, as well as members of my family, read this crap and resend to as many people as possible it with no attempt towards keeping private addresses private, and probably even pat themselves on the back about it.

Out of this dunghill, I have to admit there was a true gem once. I got this outraged email, sent to about a hundred people at once, by this guy who went to the supermarket late at night to buy a carton of milk, found it easy to go the wrong way in the empty parking lot, and got fined by the traffic cops within private property. He went on a rant about it, and at the end attached the fine in jpeg format, as irrefutable evidence of his victimization at the hands of "the pigs".
I mean, there's something so Lebowsky about it. I'd betcha The Dude would have a Hotmail address!

It really only takes three steps

It really only takes three steps:

1. Get SpamAssassin working well
2. Set up a good .procmailrc (remember, /dev/null is a good option for 90% of everything)
3. Check email when you arrive at work, when you get back from lunch and just before you leave. Ignore it the rest of the day.

Those who can't teach . . .

What the hell is an executive coach? Is this someone who has reached the top of their field, but decided to retire from executing and help others reach their goals? They got tired of making executive salaries? Got tired of the biggest office in the building?

I guessing a executive coach is a two bit hack whose only talent in life is convincing people that they need to take spurious seminars. If they new something about being a successful executive, they would be successful executives. And, I'm guessing that a successful execitive doesn't need much coaching.

Addiction,

Addiction is realted to crack and heroïne. I don't know of anyone who ruined his life on e-mail, let alone instant messaging. The day you are willing to sell your T.V. or give a blowjob for your emails, ok, then, i'll be convinced that you are addicted, until then, keep the word "addicted" for real serious addictions like drugs, not emails or IM or WOW for that matter.

What's with deleting

How does me deleting or archiving emails change the amount of time I'll spend on them? I don't see that as part of "addiction", any more than having a step to quitting smoking being to clean up your cigaratte butts vs leave them in the ash tray.

I use gmail, and I delete emails that are crap, spam or useless. (Or slashdot replies :)) Everything else, I keep permanently.

How's this for a new approach to email: Don't see it as a waste of time, but a powerful tool, a personal repository. My inbox is so comprehensive I can now search it for people's addresses, helpful advice, code snippets, etc. Deleting emails makes them a waste of time.