Motley says: "E-mail is sucking the life out of me. I can't keep up."
Summary
Motley: I am a developer. I am paid to develop, not write e-mail all day. E-mail is sucking the life out of me and I can't keep up.
Maven: Use your Inbox as your to-do list, keep your Inbox to < 10 messages, categorize and/or create folders, use server-side rules to redirect e-mail, do quick triage of e-mail, use search, shut down your mail client.
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[Context: Motley is expressing his frustration over not getting any "real" work done lately. Maven, of course, is curious as to why that is]
<a loud bang from Motley's office area>
Maven: Whoa! What the heck was that?!?
Motley: You had better take a step back if you want to avoid my fists of fury. I am not having the greatest day.
Maven: What's up? Anything I can do?
Motley: Every time I blink there is a new e-mail in my Inbox. I can't keep up. I am now about 200 messages behind. I can't get any work done because I keep getting e-mail. I am sorry that my monitor has to take the brunt of my frustration, but you weren't around. How do you deal with the barrage of e-mail Mr. Smarty Pants?
Maven: E-mail is a tough problem. It can absolutely consume your entire life if you are not careful. There are a few tricks though that can make your life much simpler.
Motley: Like deleting them all with one fell swoop?
Maven: Not quite. Firstly, get off all distribution groups that do not add you value. As a senior guy, I know you want to be in touch with everything, but sometimes you have to let go. Ask yourself how many of those messages are actually relevant to your activities. Anything that doesn't qualify, unsubscribe. Missing an e-mail conversation will not inhibit your career.
Motley: I'm already trimmed as far as I can go, but I still get a ton of messages.
Maven: Next, use Outlook (or whatever e-mail client you use) to set up some folders for categorizing mail. I typically use a few folders for general discussion e-mails that do not contain any high priority items (e.g. the Mobile Devices daily news, CNET news, etc.), and a few folders for more specific work-related functions. I then set up some server-side rules to automatically move incoming messages that fall within those categories directly to those folders.
Motley: Yeah, but if I set up too many folders it won't solve my problem - I'll just get confused as to where things are that matter.
Maven: You don't want to have too many folders, but you want enough to get a significant chunk of lower priority messages out of your Inbox. Your Inbox then only contains messages that require prompt attention. You may treat your Inbox as your to-do list. If it contains thousands of e-mails, you'll find yourself lost. Try to get to a state where you have < 10 (or a screen full) mails in your Inbox, and stay there. When you do a mail check, either address it right away and delete it, categorize it, or move it to another folder. Moving to another folder and categorizing can be the same thing. Some people have three different folders for high priority (urgent and important), medium priority (urgent), and low priority (not urgent or important, but needs to get done eventually). Others, like me, use categories in Outlook and arrange the Inbox by category with high priority items at the top. The category names I use are:
- "3. Important" (colored red)
- "2. Medium Priority" (colored yellow)
- "1. Low Priority" (colored green)
You can use the number at the beginning to sort the Inbox with the important items first. I sometimes use reminders as well to ensure I get to an item by a certain time.
Motley: Less than 10 e-mails. Are you crazy?!? I have about 900 messages in my Inbox, of which 200 are unread!
Maven: Spend a bit of time cleaning that up. Get down to < 10. Make it a daily goal to keep the number low. Start each day with an initial triage - look at the subjects and delete anything that is not of concern. Consider whether a rule is necessary to get that kind of mail out of your Inbox. I also like to color-code messages with me on the To: line. Those messages are generally more important than messages sent to a distribution list that I belong to.
Motley: What about all the stuff you put in folders? You have to get those at some point! It's also a lot more places to look for a specific message.
Maven: Yes, perhaps once a day. You don't want distraction throughout the day on messages that are less important. Set aside time once per day to scrub non-Inbox messages and perform bulk deletes as necessary. If you find one that requires your attention, move it to your Inbox and consider modifying the rule for the future. For finding messages, name your folders intuitively. Also, most e-mail clients these days have quick search functionality built-in. Leverage it.
Motley: Even with all these rules in place, I'm still going to get 25-50 messages per day in my Inbox. That's still a lot of distraction wise guy. And if patterns hold, half will be from you!
Maven: You exaggerate. I am sure I don't send that much mail. Firstly, though, you need to turn off that annoying pop-up new mail indicator that most e-mail clients (like Outlook have). It is distracting. Next, shut down your mail client. Open it once in the morning, once around lunch, and once at the end of the day at most. Set the expectation with your co-workers that you will not respond instantaneously to e-mail. I bet that one action cuts down on your e-mail. Of course, then you have to take care of in-person distraction. Shut your door (if you have one) when you need concentration time, find another place to work with your laptop or throw on some headphones.
Motley: Apparently they say in Alcoholics Anonymous that the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. I admit it - I can't turn off that mail indicator. If I do I'll just be wondering whether someone just sent me new mail.
Maven: At least you admit you are an addict! Trust me, though, once you see your productivity rise because you limit e-mail checks to three per day, you will thank me. I wonder how you will feel when I suggest that when you go on vacation to set an out-of-office message indicating that you will be deleting all e-mail while you are away unless it has "SAVE:" in the subject line?
Motley: Get lost. I could never set a rule to auto-delete mail like that.
Maven: I have found that's the only way to a stress-free vacation. It worked for a 3 month vacation that my previous manager took. Just try out the above tips and see how they work for you. Cutting down on e-mail is a huge key to developer productivity, especially in a large company. I've heard that Microsoft culture revolves around e-mail.
Motley: Sucks to be them. Although I guess we are in the same boat to some extent, just not to that same magnitude. Ugh. I'll try anything.
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Maven's Pointer: It is a great feeling having an empty Inbox. It's a great to-do list, and there is certain satisfaction in addressing all the items on your to-do list. There are many strategies out there for handling mail and no one strategy works for everyone. I do believe that keeping your Inbox clean, however, is the best way to go. Regardless of how you do that, it is a valuable and effective technique in organizing your daily life. One last tip: if an item stays in your Inbox for more than a few days, it's probably not important and something you are not motivated to deal with. Delegate it (if necessary) and delete it.
Maven's Resources:
