I’m seeking to understand the challenges of dealing with e-mail. It’s not as simple as it seems. Of the people who find e-mail a challenge, different people have different issues. For some, it’s keeping their inbox empty; they get stressed out from a large, unanswered inbox. For others, it’s treating e-mail as interruption (”I know it’s probably not important, but I can’t help checking when the little notification appears on my screen”).
What are your big e-mail challenges? What parts of dealing with e-mail would you like to streamline?
12 responses so far ↓
1 chris // Jun 30, 2008 at 11:52 am
interesting to see your tweet, as i had just posted a tweet about email: http://twitter.com/christackett/statuses/846971446
For me, a big annoyance is people who don’t use Gmail. Funny that that has become a problem, but seriously 95% of the people I communicate w/ on a regular basis are using it.
I also have some friends that aren’t on Gmail and like to change the subject line w/ each new email, so conversations aren’t kept together.
Minor, but annoying.
2 Kevin Montgomery // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I think the biggest email challenge for me is deciding what to do with emails that become tasks, but are conditional to other things being done first. It raises questions like: How long do I keep this email? How should I file it, or SHOULD I file it? This kind of challenge takes the longest for me to sort out.
3 Peter Squire // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Using email as tasks, rather than an email system. Constantly waiting for an email, rather than closing it and working uninterrupted.
4 Vern // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Several come to mind.
1. Two systems: one for work, one for personal. I agree with Chris, I wish it could all be in gmail.
2. Converting email information into to-do items. Firefox’s GTDinbox addin works quite well, but not perfect.
3. Figuring out what to save, and for how long.
5 sara // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I agree with Vern’s #3 - which is related to the one I want to add. I read my mail about 50% of the time on my blackberry, but haven’t yet figured out the best way to reconcile mail I’ve read on it to my Entourage mailbox on my Mac. So currently I have about 100 unread messages on my Mac and on my blackberry, when in fact I’ve read all of them. Just can’t seem to bring myself to delete them all together, so they sit and slowly drive me crazy!
6 Joyce // Jun 30, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I think my biggest challenge is managing expectations. People seem to think that just because they sent me a message that they should get an immediate response. I try to keep my “unread” messages below 50. I get cc’ed on a lot of messages, so don’t feel compelled to open everything immediately.
At work they instigated a new system whereby any messages over 3 months old are automatically deleted. At first it caused great angst but then I realized that I rarely went back that far to find something. If I do need to find something sent that long ago, it’s more effective to ask for an update, since there have likely been several changes/updates.
I’ve actually created different e-mail accounts for different purposes: work, family correspondence, non profit affiliations, friends, and one for all the newsletter/promotional info I sign up for. It helps to keep things segregated. Of course, it doesn’t stop my family or friends from sending messages to work but it does minimize the clutter.
My own personal ettiquette - if it’s important I always call the person I sent it to to alert them. I typically need to collect data/information from direct reports/colleagues. This way they know to look for my message and I can reinforce any deadlines. I also try to use other communications tools besides e-mail: phone calls, collaboration sites, IM, or just waking into someone’s office for a real conversation. If any communication vehicle if overused, it becomes ineffective.
7 Matt B. // Jun 30, 2008 at 3:35 pm
In October 2006 I actually took a vacation day from work to get caught up in e-mail. Since then, following the guidance of Manager Tools (http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/09/got-email/) I have been clutter free ever since, and much less stressed about e-mail.
Every now and again I slip and fall (behind) but never for very long.
For me, the greatest challenge with e-mail is, even though I am caught up, the masses still abuse e-mail, and worse, many mis-interepret their job as “doing e-mail”.
E-mail is a communication tool, not a work force or project tool. Sure, we as managers are to blame for not helping our employees better understand that but one look at the tools (Outlook, mail.app, LotusNotes, etc.) and you see that there is no application that treats e-mail the way it should be although Gmail comes close.
8 Candis // Jun 30, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I’ll echo the idea of wanting to sort e-mails into to-do’s. For me, many of the e-mails I receive are requests for something to be done, so it would be helpful to be able to organize and prioritize all of that.
Also would be great if there was a system that was smart enough to organize my e-mail (by sender and subject perhaps?) as it comes in. That way, I’d have a general idea of what’s on my plate in each category before I even open them.
9 Wendy // Jul 1, 2008 at 9:02 pm
1. What should I do with this email? Delete? File? What if it’s got information that I don’t want to delete, and isn’t urgent, but don’t want to file it away and never see it again? I might act on something in it, but I’m not sure. This particularly refers to e-newsletters. They have articles I might want to look at someday.
2. In terms of social emails, the annoying thing is that emails are like letters, but because they’re so easy to do, most people just write quick little bits instead of well-thought out letters. Hence, instead of having a group of nicely written letters that I could file away in a cute little box, I have hundreds of memo-style messages that aren’t quite meaningful enough to store under my bed, but aren’t meaningless enough to delete. Arrgghh! I don’t like making decisions.
3. Important emails get mixed up with e-newsletters, and hence, I pay less attention when I get them. When you recieve letters however, you can clearly see which ones are from friends and which ones are from companies. Friends hand write, use real stamps instead of ‘postage paid’. Emails all look the same. Ooh, that’s a good point I made, if I may say so myself…
4. When you recieve an email at work, how soon should you respond? How do you know when the other person is going to respond? Most times I’d rather just pick up a phone and sort it out there and then. Instant gratification. Ahhh.
10 Jim Sewell // Jul 2, 2008 at 8:32 am
Two things come to mind.
1. My friends that insist on forwarding emails to me about the kid dying of cancer wanting post cards, Captain Kangaroo helped Lee Marvin take Iwo Jima and other urban legends. I have to take time to visit snopes.com just to determine whether to believe them or not… some are pretty believable and my friends never verify them before hitting the forward button.
2. Inconsistent email systems. Outlook is the worst offender but there is no standard - or none adhered to - for doing things. One example is Gmail used to let you send email as if it came from a different, verified, email address of yours. This was great for small businesses and people wearing multiple hats. Outlook would get it and say From XXX on behalf of YYY, thus exposing your root email address that the smart person keeps closely guarded to avoid/manage spam.
11 MikeL // Jul 2, 2008 at 9:39 am
Changing mail into tasks is not where I need to get to. I want to change mail into calendar entries - it works within Outlook but is inconsistent with multiple email systems. If you make email into a task you are not scheduling a time to get back to it so it may be missed or maybe worse is haunting you. I also want to be able to send email with some keys on it that puts it into my calendar.
12 Che // Jul 15, 2008 at 12:30 am
I HATE people who use too girly, flowerly fonts for their work signatures in sickeningly pastel colors.
Oh, don’t get me started on animated gifs…
Tolerable for personal emails but NOT for work!
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