There’s one bad habit that most people have (myself included) that leads to
an overflowing inbox.

There’s one good habit that, if adopted, can reduce the clutter
dramatically. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this one technique,
if adopted religiously, can reduce the size of your currently unmanaged inbox
by as much as 80%.

I’ll call it “plowing through” but that doesn’t do it justice because
there’s actually rationale and logic behind it. Others refer to it as “just do
it”; a take-off on the old Nike slogan.

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One thing that many people fail to realize is that email was never meant to
be “real time”. The entire email infrastructure is built to expect and properly
handle delays ranging from minutes to hours to even days. While most of the
time email arrives nearly instantaneously, the fact is you can’t count on
it.

Understanding that can be very, very freeing.

We’ll look at this from two perspectives: what email delays can mean to you
as a sender, and how understand that email can be delayed can affect how you
work with email as a recipient.

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Me Too!

Or as the geekier folks often write it:

<AOL>
me too!
</AOL>

I really don’t know what it is that causes it, but for some reason email
seems to bring out the “me too” in many people. You know what I mean: you’ll
have a discussion, either one-on-one correspondence or more commonly an
exchange on a mailing list, and at its close or at some other juncture, you’ll
get a completely content-free email or collection of emails from some of the
participants.

Perhaps we feel the need to let people know we’re listening. Perhaps it’s
the email equivalent of an head nod. The problem is, as I said, that it’s
otherwise completely content free. As a result, unlike an actual head nod, it’s
difficult to ignore. Someone must download it, read it, determine its value (if
any), and then dispose of it.

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Man oh man, do people get bent out of shape about spam and the size of their
inbox. It’s simply amazing. I occasionally get questions out at Ask Leo! where people are clearly
extremely upset, apparently tearing their hair out at having to deal with
spam.

I just shake my head.

My advice?

Chill out, relax, get over it, and use the most under-used key on your
keyboard.

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One of the common frustrations I hear from people regarding email is the
feeling of being not only swamped, but “at the mercy” of their inbox. When
email arrives they feel they have to act on it right away, regardless of
whatever they’re doing.

Factoring in the “New Mail” sound of many email programs, it becomes
Pavlovian – we hear the sound and like a well trained puppy we go check our
email, interrupting whatever we were doing.

Who’s controlling who? Or rather, what’s controlling you?

At a conference a couple of years ago, a good friend made a simple
suggestion had improved his productivity dramatically. You almost
could feel the productivity of the room increase as others implemented his
oh-so-simple suggestion.

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In How many email
addresses do you need? I advocated that you need at least three email
addresses. To review, I strongly recommend that you have:

• A private address for people you trust and prioritize
  highly.
• A public address for everyone else from whom you want to
  get email.
• A throw-away address for one time, or occasional use that
  you ignore the rest of the time.

That’s a start. It’s a good start, and will go a long way to taming the
beast.

But it’s just a start. Especially if you get a lot of mail, you can do
better.

[Read more…]