Email, the ogre

Not having been at work for almost a week, it was a bit of a challenge getting back yesterday and wading through all my email. I think my email symbolises how organised or disorganised I am. Looking at my inbox, I am currently extremely disorganised – there are 21 pages of emails in my webmail inbox. Horrific, isn’t it? I almost hate email, some days. Am I alone in feeling like this?

I don’t really know what to do about it – one needs to be constantly vigilant to keep that inbox as close to empty as possible, and sometimes it’s just not possible. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to suggest ways of reducing the deluge of email at work (using IM, wiki for discussing documents, blog for ‘interesting’ links), but to no avail.

Dave Pollard’s list, When Not to Use Email, is a good one. Item number 10 on his list: don’t use email to “To send news, interesting documents, links, policies, directory updates and other ‘FYI’ stuff: Post it, where those who care about it can browse or RSS-subscribe to it. If the audience is a community of practice or community of interest, post it on a blog. If the audience is a project team, a group with a shared sense of purpose and urgency, post it to the team’s collaboration space or wiki. If the audience is really broader than that, post it to the Intranet, Extranet or public Internet site.”

I have decided that I am going to stop contributing to the inundation, even if it means not sending on that must read article, or that thought-provoking blog post, or whatever. I do wish my colleagues could read Dave’s post, but if I don’t send it to them I guess they won’t. I think a lot of the resistance to trying new methods is the fact that people feel like they have way too much to do already – thanks to email. Ironic.

P.S. This gripe is about my work email. My personal email is quite pleasingly tidy at the moment.