One of the worst causes of information overload is the constant arrival of email into the knowledge worker’s attention sphere. With new mail arriving every few minutes, people can never fully focus on their work. If they haven’t turned off the “you’ve got mail” alerts they are passively distracted; if they have, a sizable fraction of users still distract themselves by checking for new email every few minutes. What is needed is a way to prevent this checking.
A radical email overload solution concept
Over my years of helping companies fight information overload I’ve devised my share of original solutions; many were successfully adopted, but some were too radical for that. One of the most extreme has been batching email delivery at the server; so radical that it was never accepted for implementation by any organization I’ve ever advised. Even so, I’ll share it with you: perhaps you can use it to good advantage, or perhaps it will trigger useful thoughts that will lead you to initiate other solutions.
Here’s the idea: since many people lack the discipline and willpower not to check their Inbox compulsively for new mail every few minutes, let’s deliver the mail to their Inbox less frequently. For instance, we can have IT change settings at the email server so that messages will be batched and only sent to the clients once an hour.
A valid objection and its solution
No organization would accept that urgent messages might be delayed up to one hour. Thus, a workaround for identifying urgent messages and exempting them from the delay would of course need to be included. For example, a filter could be implemented that would let through without delay urgent messages (these might be identified by the “importance” flag, or by having the email hashtag #HOT in the subject). Or mail from external customers might automatically be exempted. Details could be worked out and fine tuned; but the large mass of internal, non-urgent emails would be delivered only a few times a day.
Implementing such a solution would involve changes to the server’s software – not an afternoon coding task, but certainly doable by the IT group of any respectable enterprise.
Another variation: we could allow senders to request exceptions (instant delivery) for specific messages, with a mechanism to de-motivate abuse, such as monitoring usage of this option or charging a fee for instant delivery (similar to the higher cost of express snail mail). Some intriguing possibilities come to mind if you think about it…
Change is in the air
Recently there are signs that companies may become more amenable to this solution category. The case that comes to mind is Volkswagen, where they turn off the BlackBerry servers after formal work hours; this means employees can’t receive email on their BlackBerries in their evenings and weekends. The messages are thus batched until the next workday. Admittedly the benefit here is to Work/Life balance, not to work time effectiveness; but it’s a start, and of course more Life is invaluable to better Work.
What you can do about this
Actually, you need to be either very senior in the organization (or an incredibly effective change agent) to get such a policy implemented; if you are, do consider it – the potential productivity benefits are far-reaching. The next best thing you can do is to achieve the batching for yourself by not synchronizing your mail – assuming your mail client allows this – in real time, and instead setting it to pull in new messages from the server at the desired interval. This could support the strategy of only checking email a few predefined times a day, which I highly recommend in any case as an individual strategy. I myself use manual synchronization and pull my mail at judiciously chosen times to match my time management strategy and work needs.
If you’ve seen a solution in this vein implemented, let us all know in the comments; if you’d like to do it in your group, give me a call!
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I fully agree with you, Nathan, about people not having the willpower to avoid checking email and then getting sucked into working on emails. Perhaps the email looked like it could be done in just a few minutes, or perhaps our need to please others makes email so much more compelling than drafting documents and other difficult tasks. About a year ago I turned off my Outlook alerts because I found that by 2pm or so my entire day had become consumed by email, and there was no way of getting it back on track–all good energy used up on emailing. And it has NOT resulted in tons of people complaining that I’m not responsive enough, either! 🙂
Yes Nathan, batch email. That is the Fourth Principle in my MasteringEmail methodology. Thank you, Bob
Actually, Bob, the fourth principle you cite (and my favorite email tip it is) is about personally directed batching; in this post I try to suggest a company-run solution that batches at the source, on the server. Doing both at once, ideally, would deal email overload a double blow!
I totally agree with you Nathan – the impacts of allowing e-mail ‘as-an-interruption’ are largely unmeasured and amazingly devastating. I wrote a special report on the 7 critical impacts of email and information overload to highlight this and a good deal of that material can be attributed to your work at Intel. Your article today is another fine example of your thought leadership in this area – thanks again!
Steuart
Hey, thanks, Steuart, for the kind words! 🙂
Nathan – Very insightful piece on Radical Email Overload Solution. Some great ideas in there. What are your thoughts on using the new app, Talkler – Email for your Ears in addition to your solutions?
Hey Josh, Talkler sounds interesting – do you have data on its actual user response? I’m interested to know how many users find processing of primarily one to one text only communications sufficient. My concern would be that a significant fraction of my email usage involves attachments, searching for and reference to existing mails and files on my computer, viewing images etc – which a voice only interface would probably be inadequate for, and which account for most of my time (though not message count). As one CIO once told me, deleting the 200 unnecessary messages he gets daily takes him half an hour; the 40 remaining messages that require thought and serious decision making would take all the rest of the day if he tried to handle them… Perhaps different user types have different situations though.
So – share any research data you have!
Nathan, you raise excellent points — especially about the minority of emails requiring the majority of time and effort. One statistic: Email demands 28% of a worker’s workweek (McKinsey).
Talkler is designed to assist with the following: Reviewing (listening to) emails, deleting emails, replying via voice to emails, and marking as unread those messages that warrant later attention. There are certainly other tasks to which Talkler is not suited (yet) — handling attached documents, granting voice-controlled access to both email and calendar (for “when can we meet?” emails).
So for all the emails you CAN address by reading, deleting and replying, there’s Talkler. For all the times you wish you could read/delete/reply, but you’re stuck behind the wheel, or in the kitchen, or on the move, there’s Talkler. For the remaining emails, there’s…well…email. 🙂
Thanks for a great conversation!
Well said, Josh.
Another statistic: Email demands 20% of a worker’s workweek (Zeldes et al. – http://bit.ly/10tTV5 in appendix 2). Whether it’s 20 or 28, it’s a lot!