An attendee at a lecture at a multinational tech company pointed out to me that part of his problem with email overload stems from situations where he is part of a functional distribution list, say “All Engineering”. Some messages to the entire group he does need, but there are other specific recurrent  messages that other engineers need and he doesn’t. Then when he goes to the sender and asks to get off, he is told it can’t be done – you can’t “unsubscribe” from the list: if you’re an engineer, you are automatically included and cursed for all eternity to.. Read more

I received a letter (yes, on paper) from Audible.com. I am a happy customer of their audio book service; I pay a fixed modest sum monthly, and receive one “credit” each month, which embodies the right to download one book into my iPod. Their letter tried to sell me on the idea of getting onto their “Email Network”. In other words, grant them permission to send me promotional emails. I can’t complain – they were kind (and law abiding) enough to ask my permission, after all. But I read the letter and was struck by one of the “benefits” they.. Read more

I was trying to get my email Inbox down to zero for the weekend, and though I was making good progress, I felt a mounting sense of stress. Realizing this, I stopped to introspect: why stress? Here I was, going down the list of incoming messages, deleting the useless ones and addressing the more important stuff, and generally doing a good job. Why stress, rather than a feeling of accomplishment? So I examined more closely what I was doing in the process, and I realized that many of the emails were carrying “gifts” of additional activities. One message might direct.. Read more