E-Mail Addiction 12-Steps Stumbles 111
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. (Score:1)
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.
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That's funny, I'm known as the guy who turns an instant-messaging system into snail mail because I forget to put up an away message and it confuses people.
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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.
That's funny, I'm known as the guy who turns an instant-messaging system into snail mail because I forget to put up an away message and it confuses people.
I actually do both of those things... never realized how ridiculous I am until just now...
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Re:Email is for instant-messaging. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I got you beat, then. I started doing that in 1989 when I was in college at SUNY Alfred.
The SUNY schools were, at the time, connected to BITNet, and there was also a DECNet network that connected all of the SUNY schools with VAXes. The DECNet-based network allowed inter-node chat, something like talk on *NIX, but slightly more aesthetically pleasing.
Anyway, I used this system to talk to some frie
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Exactly, and I'm not surprised that it is still there, because it is actually pretty good, as I recall.
XBIFF in the 90's. FastCheck now. (Score:1)
Nowadays I use FastMail.fm and have FastCheck under Windows that creates an audible notification on incoming mail to monitored folders so new email "rings" just like a phone does (using IMAP IDLE extension notifications are practically real time). I file most incoming email out of the Inbox using Sieve so I don't get notifications for whatever I don't want to b
This is just GTD (Score:3, Informative)
Anything under 2 minutes do it
Yadda yadda
Re:This is just GTD (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
- 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: (Score:1)
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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
Re:This is just GTD (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is just GTD (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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(Note, I'm UKish, and there's nothing remotely amusing about that l
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I while ago I had aging mail servers on a two minute spam processing cycle to keep them going at all - nobody got email in less than two minutes. One user had an annoying habit of popping the server every single second when they expected important emails which slowed the creaking and overloaded system even more and they still would only get their mail in two minute batches. This exact behavior spread over an
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I tried GTD... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I tried GTD... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I tried GTD... (Score:4, Informative)
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. (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
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Good for you if you're happy with that method, but don't think it's the be-all-end-all for the rest of the world. Time management methods are like diets: what works for one guy may not work for another. Which is why I suggested to try the "GTD" method if you feel you are swamped by your incoming email. If not, just continue a
Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
P.S. Did you see the Vista article in the Register a couple threads below this?
and remember... (Score:2, Funny)
What about spam? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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How much time do you really spend on deleting spam?
Spam is highly annoying if you pull up your inbox every time your computer goes 'ping' and the little envelope appears in the tool tray. However if you follow the tips in the article and sit down every hour, 2 hours, day (whatever works for you) to process everything in your inbox in one go, spam takes just seconds to dea
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Assuming you haven't compromised your email address (lots of ways to do this), you might not get much spam, in which case it doesn't take a lot of time. If you do get spam, having automated means to manage it can help (although I'd argue that your best bet is to not get it in the first place)
These are the things that users need to be educated in BEFORE you can move on to other email productivity "best practices". I don't care how good your are at managing your email time, if you
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Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension... (Score:2)
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
Re:Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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It's like gmail, but for Thunderbird.
Re:Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension.. (Score:2)
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GMail (Score:1)
Re:Speaking of email, is there a Tbird extension.. (Score:2)
That is just a little bit silly and is asking for trouble.
This reminds me of the user who insisted on Outlook Express with local mail storage (Outlook not so good) that complained to me that he put all his email in the trash to sort through it, but it tooks too long so he turned the computer off and went home, and all of his email was gone in the morning. He ambushed me in the lunch room with that one and made a lot of people laugh - but he was entire
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They Missed the Point (Score:1)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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At my company, we run the office apps in a hosted Citrix environment, so it's impossible to install anything. Thus, I can't run Google Desktop Search, X1 or anything else, and searching e-mail is virtually impossible. (Outlook's built in search takes two-three minutes, typically, which feels like hours and is completely unusable in practice.) Then
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Where's the religion? (Score:2)
My last employer insisted on this (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Then you can always say, my inbox is EMPTY.
(probably depends on what the meaning of is is)
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We just migrated from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange (don't ask me to explain why; I wasn't part of the migration team). They had to make a requirement that staffers couldn't have more than 4000 messages in their inbox prior to migration. This was tough because some long-time staffers literally had tens of thousands of messages in there.
When you start using your inbox like a file server, there's a problem.
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All joking aside, now I'm managing the email system. 30-odd people, 59GB growing at a rate of about 30GB/year. It's compounded by people who see email as essentially a glorified filesystem with the added bonus that it's easy to see who each file relates to because it's self-organising in that regard.
I'm in two minds: either I stop adding disk and start enforcing policies like "no email over 6 months old" (some people keep everything for years, however tiny or irrelev
why everything is in my inbox (Score:1)
Unread/new messages are... not marked as Read.
By default, all I see are the unread messages, and whatever I've flagged.
Alternate views (e.g.: everything that I sent, everything that another particular person/entity sent, all messages about some topic, messages within some date-range...) are defined primarily by searches.
But if I don't check my email constantly (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong addiction (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Wrong addiction (Score:5, Funny)
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Why assume email is bad? (Score:1)
Frankly, I much prefer email to voicemail. Live phone calls are better for some subjects, but worse for others.
10 suggestions (Score:3, Interesting)
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..." (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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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.
It's more than likely someone trying to use terminology the executives will understand.
If you look around in meatspace you may see these (usually metal) cabinets with drawers in them that some people call filing cabinets. The folders and records in those are probably referred to collectively as files. So from the perspective of the executive creating a file for the emails makes sense. It's probably faster for the consultant to use that term rather than try to explain the concept of folders to a bunch of
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From experience, most executive-types I know that tee-off at 2:30 have at least 1 human-email filter, and don't have to worry about email addiction.
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Anyone with an elementary school education, including executives :), should know the difference between "file" the noun, and "file" the verb.
You're asking people that incentivise their human resources to synergise solution production to remember elementary school grammar. ;) Yes, I know the difference, I was simply trying to show how a coach could reason their way to using certain terms that we find ridiculous. Being able to reason that way can help when I'm trying to figure out what someone who isn't familiar with the "proper" terminology is saying.
In this case I doubt the advisor/coach is dumbing-down the language for the sake of the executives. On the bright side at least there is no confusion about "folder".
I can see it now: "But.. but.. it doesn't fold."
From experience, most executive-types I know that tee-off at 2:30 have at least 1 human-email filter, and don't have to worry about email addiction.
Heh, I was attempting humor there. Oh well,
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Sorry to make you look silly while ranting but they are correct - the icon may look like a folder but it is usually just a file - try to get more than 2GB in a "folder" in several brands of MS Outlook and you will find that out.
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The discussion was not about software implementation.
Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
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 RE
I don't have an inbox (Score:2, Funny)
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Simply hilarious.
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If it was really made of Godwin, it would have included Nazis.
Email time-savers? (Score:1)
Someone mod parent insightful! (Score:1)
I sent her an e-mail... (Score:1)
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Inquiring minds want to know!
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My inbox is empty... (Score:2)
...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. (Score:2)
One time, to my astonishment, it was just a list of email addresses upon addr
It really only takes three steps (Score:1)
Those who can't teach . . . (Score:1)
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 guessi
Addiction, (Score:1)
What's with deleting (Score:2)
I use gmail, and I delete emails that are crap, spam or useless. (Or slashdot replies
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 comprehen
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