How to manage email – Part 1 of 3

This will be an evolving series of posts as I collect my thoughts about how best to handle email, and what you should understand about me when you send me an email.

Unfortunately, a tool that I used to love and use to get more done has degenerated into the biggest distraction and impediment to getting anything done.  It’s become the epitome of fake work across every organization I’ve seen in over at least the past decade.  And for every individual, it becomes an almost cruel taunt of having everybody else set your own personal agenda.

The signal to noise ratio with email is simply too high.  There’s no filter and no way to discern whether something is important, urgent, or nonsense.

Seth Godin said it well in a recent post.  He said that whoever sets my incoming media or queue sets my own best work.  Using examples of the time to look at stats that don’t matter, or somebody elses problems that maybe as their manager I should give them some advice, but maybe as a good manager I should purposefuly delay my advice and see what they come up with.

I’ll talk about an inbox assistant tool in another post.  Tell me if you think it has any product or service viability, or would just really upset my peers and superiors at work..

And let me know if you also suffer from EIA – Extreme Inbox Anxiety.  Or Maybe IAD – Inbox Aniety Disorder.  There’s little doubt in my mind that if it doesn’t exist already, something similar will very soon.