We're Drowning in E-mail

New software is aimed at foiling an annoying productivity thief: e-mail overload.

By Michael Doan, Senior Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter

August 1, 2008

E-mail and other digital information comes at us fast -- so furiously fast that we spend nearly a third of each working day simply coping with it, based on data from the Information Overload Research Group (IORG), made up of experts from IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel and other tech giants. IORG's mission is to cut through the clutter.

Programs that prioritize messages can help save employees' time. Software, such as those available from C-Mail, ClearContext, SpeedFiler and others, uses ratings that employees assign to senders and subject messages plus analysis of past e-mail usage.

IORG's director, Nathan Zeldes, an Intel engineer, says software from ClearContext sorts email into different categories of messages -- urgent, less urgent and so on. Some can be held for later viewing. For example, the status of your book shipment and the latest offer from your travel vendor are placed in a separate folder to read when you're less pressed for time. It also enables you to unsubscribe from message threads that are of no interest to you -- coworkers' back and forth about a meeting they may have attended, for example.

A program from C-Mail prioritizes e-mail based on your past e-mail usage. A message from your boss will pop up ahead of an offer from your favorite antique dealer. Claritude's SpeedFiler automatically files incoming and outgoing messages into separate folders, keeping them from all piling up in your inbox.

Coming soon, even more sophisticated ways to pare messages: Another firm, Seriosity, is developing "e-mail currency." It will work like this: An employee is given 100 credits at the start of the week. Of that 100, he or she may opt to spend 20 credits on an extremely important message to the board of directors and 1 credit on an FYI message to an intern. The limited number of credits will force senders to censor themselves. Run out of credits and you can't send any more e-mails until your next allotment.

Future systems will sort both e-mail and telephone messages. They'll be able to decide from past usage whether the receiving employee should be interrupted or the message can be ignored. Google, meanwhile, is testing a feature called E-Mail Addict for its Gmail members. The service cuts users off from their inbox for 15 minutes or longer whenever users feel like they need a break.

Besides new tech solutions, there are other ways to reduce the time spent reading e-mails. Among experts' tips:

• Don't make "Reply to All" responses to e-mails unless absolutely necessary. You may be burdening 500 people who have no interest in your answer.

• Don't issue weekly reports that can just as well be sent out biweekly.

• If the message is more than one screen long, write a summary of the message at the top.

• "Don't use an "Out of Office" alert if the absence is for less than three days.

• Put short messages in the subject line only and leave the body of the message empty.

• Turn off e-mail alerts that send off a noise or pop-up with every arriving message.

• Most important, meet face to face when possible. E-mail messages' tones are often misunderstood. There's no substitute for the body language and eye contact that come from personal contact.

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