Rather than sprinkle comments throughout Taming Email, I’m setting aside this
item specifically for your questions and feedback.
It’s Time for a Road Map
TamingEmail.com comes from a ton of ideas that are swirling around in my head having to do with managing email more effectively. As with so many things swirling around in my brain, it’s full of promise, but highly disorganized.
So here’s a brain-dump. An outline, a road map, a sense of direction. The topics concepts and ideas that TamingEmail.com is going to cover.
In other words, just where do I think I’m headed?
That’s a lot of mail!
Before I dive in to documenting some of the techniques I use to manage it
all, I thought a snapshot of a year’s worth of email might be interesting.
Last year (2005) my wife and I received 4.5 gigabytes of
email in almost half a million email messages.
Yes, that would be a lot of email.
How it breaks down is kind of interesting, as well.
My Inbox is Empty. Yours?
Wait! Don’t curse me out! You can have an empty inbox too.
That’s what Taming Email is
all about – getting your email under control
“Doing” Email
Many years ago while working at Microsoft, my manager commented to me that
he spent too much time “doing email”. Even then, circa 1992, before spam and
viruses and before email marketing, email had become an important part of daily
business. It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the flood of messages, all seeming
to demand some kind of response.
But wait. Just what does it mean to “do email”?
In my opinion it means that we’re not looking at email properly. It means
that a shift in attitude and approach is required.
Email isn’t something you “do” – it’s a tool you use.
Taming Email is
about honing your skills using that tool. Just like a carpenter builds better
homes as he becomes more proficient using the tools of his trade, we can all
become better at whatever it we do by learning to more effectively and
efficiently use the tool that is email.
And what a powerful tool it is.
Let’s look a little more closely at the difference between “doing email” and
using email as a tool