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Hold that E-mail

by Kas Kasravi

Most of us remember the flood of news stories a few years ago about how e-mails and other electronic communications harm one's IQ more than some narcotics (see BBC News, CNN, Guardian, The Stanford Daily, Times Online for examples). I don't know if the causation of the claim was ever scientifically proven, but it's a fact that we receive way too many e-mails, IMs, and text messages every day.

Tom Davenport and John Beck's book, The Attention Economy, stated that "the average U.S. office worker is spending almost half the day in message-related activity". Another example is a report in the Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge by Stever Robbins, where it was shown that the employee who actually responds to 100 emails each day (at three minutes per response) would need five hours to complete the task. There are plenty of other references about the overload of electronic messages.

I think the problem is not just the quantity of electronic messages we receive; after all, if it's work-related, then it's work. However, I believe the real harm is in the distraction that they cause. Each message takes our focus away from what we are doing, requiring some recovery time when we get back to the task. Many of us have set up rules in our e-mail clients to manage or pre-process the incoming e-mails. Now, I think we may have a better tool.

Here comes the Email Prioritizer prototype for Outlook 2007, from the folks at Microsoft Office Labs. This plug-in is intended to help us manage the flood of incoming e-mails. Based on user-defined priorities, it ‘holds' the incoming e-mails with a "Do Not Disturb" feature. It also uses a 0-3 rating system to help determine the relevance of each e-mail.

This Outlook plug-in sounds interesting and useful. If you've tried it, what do you think about it?

Published Friday, August 22, 2008 8:48 PM

Filed under: Emerging Technologies

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Comments

Posted by Stever Robbins Sunday, August 24, 2008 3:28 PM

I'm not sure that a technological solution is sufficient. A "hold" button is great for avoiding distractions now, but at the cost of a backlog later.

It seems to me that in order to deal well with email, you must learn to train the people who send you email to think more carefully before sending. Many people use email as a substitute for thought ("Why should I look up the instructions when I can just ask Kas?") or conversation ("How are you today?"). Neither is a good use of *your* time. You need to train them to read the manual or, for conversation, pick up the phone.

I like to think: if it's not important enough for you to call, why should it be important enough for me to read and respond to?

Posted by Kas Kasravi Monday, August 25, 2008 6:21 PM

Thanks for your comment Stever. I completely agree that technology is not the only answer. I found this tool helpful in finding some quality and distraction-free time, without worrying about missing the more important e-mails. I also found that blocking a time later on just for going through the e-mail backlog to be fairly productive. On the grander scale, I agree that better and more responsible communication practices can be substantially more useful - e.g., avoiding that "Reply All" button.

Posted by Andy Burbidge Monday, August 25, 2008 9:37 PM

I agree that the solution to the problem is in properly educating or training the senders of all the e-mail. As well as the innapropriate use of e-mail mentioned by Steve there are a few other fundamental changes in e-mail usage that will really help.

1. The person who feels the need to Copy of CC anybody who might have even remotely heard of the thread they are discussing, let alone be interested in it.

2. The people who need need to tell everybody they have met that they will be going to the dentist this afternoon, or that so and so's VPN connection is down so they aren't reading their e-mail for the next 20 minutes.

3. (this is more Inbox bloat) The person who insists on sending documents as attachments when they also exist in an e-room, kC or other repository they could simply point to. Worse still are the people who send Power Points as attachments to calendar items, leaving them to eat at your mailbox limit for the rest of time.

Bottom line educating users and not being afraid to call somebody out (privately and politely of course) for poor e-mail etiquette are of more potential power than attempts to filter or block the incoming barrage.

Posted by Rob Astle Monday, August 25, 2008 9:43 PM

In case you are interested, I saw these guys at a conference last year. They apply social networking and free market economics concepts to the e-mail overload problem...

http://www.seriosity.com/products.html

In a nutshell, you spend an electronic currency of sorts to place importance on the e-mails you send. As you receive e-mails you are accumulating the currency for your own use. I think you can configure your implementation for fixed-pie or growing-pie ecomics depending on what economic theories you subscribe to. This product may also open doors for measuring relative importance of e-mail recipients in addition to the e-mails themselves.