{"id":98,"date":"2011-05-05T05:36:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T05:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/?p=98"},"modified":"2021-11-17T12:37:58","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T12:37:58","slug":"email-overload-how-to-avoid-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Email overload &#8211; how to avoid it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Email overload is such a funny term. It depends on a person and what is still acceptable before letting things of the leash and leave incoming messages bury the inbox. I changed my filing practices drastically in the last few years. I went from &gt;30 folders to 3 of which one is simply named &quot;Done&quot;. But I still keep my inbox to hold things as reminders for what I still have to do. To tell the, truth I still have some emails from 2006 that need to be answered (or to remind me of people I met back then).<\/p>\n<p>Jones (Keeping find things found, p. 199) suggests three general rules to deal with information overflow:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"background-color: #ffff87;\">\n<li> Satisfice rather than optimize<\/li>\n<li>Triage into &quot;no&quot;, &quot;yes&quot; and &quot;maybe&quot; categories<\/li>\n<li>Sample and optimize within this sample<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of them can be applied to email as well.  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lifehacker.com\/#%215616627\/use-an-automatic-email-bankruptcy-filter-to-eliminate-inbox-stress\">Lifehacker suggested<\/a> a more radical approach:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"background-color: #ffffa5;\">Step 1: Create a filter that auto-responds to all unopened emails &gt; 14 days old w\/the following message:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"background-color: #ffffa5;\">\n<p>Your email (below) is now 14 days old and has not been opened. To<br \/>\nminimize email buildup your email has now been placed in the archive.<br \/>\nShould you still require a response simply respond back and you&#8217;ll<br \/>\nautomatically be added to the priority queue. Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"background-color: #ffffa5;\"> Step 2: Setup another filter that looks for the text &quot;Your email<br \/>\n(below)&quot;, this will catch the email responses back to you from those<br \/>\nstill requiring your response. Filter these into a special folder you<br \/>\ncheck and respond to daily.<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<p>This should NOT be of course applied to people like coworkers, family, etc. <\/p>\n<p>Several ideas to reduce the amount of emails in one&#8217;s inbox can be found in <a href=\"http:\/\/inboxzero.com\/articles\/\">Inbox Zero articles on 43folders <\/a>(from its creator). They are fun to read and have some very good ideas as well. Some ideas:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"background-color: #ffffa5;\">\n<li><strong>Shut off auto-check<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Pick off easy ones<\/strong> &#8211; If you can retire an email with a 1-2 line response (&lt; 2 minutes; pref. 30 seconds), do it now.<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Write <em>less<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Cheat<\/strong> &#8211; Use something like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abracode.com\/MailTemplate\/\" title=\"Mail templating system I use (and love) with Mail.app\">MailTemplate<\/a> to help manage answers to frequent email subjects.<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Be honest<\/strong> &#8211;  If you know in your heart that you\u2019re never going to respond to an email, get it out of sight, archive it, or just <em>delete it<\/em>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is it even possible to empty the inbox as a game with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.0boxer.com\/\">0Boxer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But beware! Expect similar behavior from others as well!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/email-dilbert.png\" class=\"no_float\" \/><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>PS: I don&#8217;t think that <a href=\"\/blog\/index.php?\/archives\/103-Is-deleting-information-the-answer-How-do-we-know-what-to-delete.html\">&quot;best before&quot;<\/a> field in email would work \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Email overload is such a funny term. It depends on a person and what is still acceptable before letting things of the leash and leave incoming messages bury the inbox. I changed my filing practices drastically in the last few years. I went from &gt;30 folders to 3 of which one is simply named &quot;Done&quot;.&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6-pim-research","category-4-software-hints","category-8-software-interfaces"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1610,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}