I love email. Really, I do. It provides a written history to keep communication and agreements clear. It allows a flexibility in response time so that we can all read and reply at different times of day/night. It saves money on phone bills and postage. Email is one of the best productivity inventions ever...er, um...at least in theory.
That productivity is a double-edged sword. Email has also doubled or tripled the workload for many of us. I know I receive around 100 emails per day on average to my business email address alone. Now that I'm working without an executive assistant, I have even more customer service inquiry mail to read and respond to. I could literally spend all day managing email and doing nothing else. That's not being very productive!
When swamped with email, most people tend to do one of two things in reaction to it:
1. Work late into the night or on weekends. For those of us with PDA's, this is also known as the Crackberry addiction of constantly reading and responding to emails. We multitask by emailing during dinnertime, on vacation, and even in the car. I made a committment to not working on weekends in 2008, and I have to say that email overload is the biggest obstacle to keeping normal work hours.
2. Become email avoidant. Sometimes, the overwhelm becomes too much. I was reading a great article on "email bankruptcy" that talks about people declaring "Chapter 7" on email and deleting their entire inbox. The article made me laugh out loud because part of me found it horrifying, while another part thought it sounded like a relief.
Both of these approaches attempt to treat the symptoms, but in fact make the overwhelm worse. If you run a small business, both of these strategies may eventually lead to business death and personal burnout. We need to find a better solution.
Can email overload be cured?
Or is this something that needs to be continually managed?
"Hi, I'm Jaya and I'm an emailaholic." There, I said it. If you saw the size of my in-box right now, you'd know I mean it humbly. Because I've got many years of working virtually under my belt, I really do have a lot of tips and tricks that work to keep email in check. Yet with the loss of my executive assistant and subsequent doubling of emails to process, I've found myself in a fever of overworking, leading up to an email-induced coma of avoidance. I'm sick of feeling dread every time I open my email inbox, and have decided to go on an email reduction program. Physician, heal thyself.
I'm being deliberately optimistic by labeling this post "The Email Cure Part I." Honestly, I don't think there is a cure for email overload. But I do know a few things that definitely help and have a few new ideas that I want to try. This will hardly be a clinical trial, but if you'd like to play along at home, I'm eager to hear how your results compare with my own. If we can save just one life from email burnout, then we're doing the world a favor.
Stay tuned for more parts in the series. As I get my email more under control, I intend to spend more time writing articles again. By the way, I do welcome feedback via email, especially your success stories. I hope those kinds of emails keep arriving in abundance.
Click here to email Jaya.
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