Keeping up with email is one of the demons of the modern world. I’ve seen enough faculty check their UMass email to see that most folks have thousands of messages in their inboxes with possibly hundreds of unread messages. Most faculty have many other things that keep them pretty busy (read: teaching and research) is it possible to keep email from being a constant source of distraction, frustration, and anguish?
There are many “systems” for managing email you can read about; some based on time management, others based on different technology tools. Like most things of this nature there is no “ONE” system that works for everyone, but there may be things we can learn from the different systems people use. In this post I’d like to share some general advice for dealing with a never ending stream of email as well as links to resources that I have found valuable.
1. Do you have a process?
We all do it: we login and check our email to see if we got that message we’re specifically waiting for. The danger is when you check in and get distracted by the dozen other new messages we weren’t looking for. My advice: don’t open those messages if you don’t have the time or energy to process them.
People make use of a variety of sorting and filtering systems to manage the streams of email depending on personal preferences and what their email tool of choice provides. The deceptively simple technique that I use is to treat my inbox as my “to do” list. Until I’ve dealt with the email I receive (be it replying, making a note of some important information, delegated it to someone else etc.) it sits in my inbox, reminding me to do whatever need be done to “complete” the task. Once I finish it I can delete the message (or file it away for future reference), thus crossing it off the list. The goal is to reach “inbox zero” – no messages in my inbox and thus nothing left on that “to do” list. I won’t claim that this strategy will work for everyone, consider sharing what techniques you have found useful in the comments for this post.
Some students and colleagues can have high expectations in terms of when and how you will reply to them so you might consider what you can do to manage those expectations. Letting your students know when you read (and therefore when to expect replies) can be a major step in the right direction (i.e. I check email when I’m in my office 3pm-5pm but not on weekends.) Some people find that setting such expectations results in the students seeing you as more responsive compared to trying to keep up with student email around the clock. (The caveat of course is that for any expectation to work you have to meet them!) I tell students that I try to reply to messages within 24 hours during the week and encourage them to send me a second email if this doesn’t happen (this is somewhat of a trick in that it puts the onus on them to follow up when I let something fall through the cracks!)
In trying to process and reply to messages, consider if replying by email is even the best way to deal with a situation or question? Rather than spending a considerable amount of time crafting an answer to a complicated question, sometimes picking up the phone or jotting down a quick email to say “lets chat in person” might be the best for both parties, both in terms of use of time and avoiding possible confusion.
2. Can you reduce the amount of email you receive?
The first step to making email easier to keep up with is to get less email. How do you get less email you ask? Take a moment to look at the information that flows into your inbox each day and consider how much of it is noise and how much of it is things you know. If you’re on many mailing mailing lists and list serves, consider which ones are useful for keeping you in touch with happenings in your field of study, and which are just noise.
Chances are if you’re teaching you get a lot of email from students. We obviously want to be available to students, but you might consider what questions you are getting asked over and over. Are there consistent points of confusion that you can identify and alleviate by revising your syllabus or assignment descriptions to address those issues before they become a deluge of messages? Perhaps these perpetual questions need to be addressed in class or in a class website. Some instructors like to use the SPARK mail system or separate email accounts for their classes to keep their different communications isolated, others can’t stand the idea of needing to check more than once place.
3. Can you check your email less?
Consider how much of your email is really “urgent” and requires immediate consideration. One of the worst things you can do for your time and attention is to have your email program constantly running in the background alerting you each minute you receive a new message. Most faculty like to think of themselves as independent people who have a great deal of control of their lives, but we sure let email interrupt and push us around like few other things in life! For some people getting over this means spending less time in front of their computer, making sure they’ve got their email program closed when their working at their machine, or maybe just setting your email program to check for new messages every 10 minutes instead of every minute.
Checking your email 20 times a day may make it easier to keep up with the constant flow, but is it really the most efficient use of your energy and attention?
4. Advice from others!
Merlin Mann, creator of the “productivity” website 43 folders, presents on the concept of Inbox Zero. He has a great system of the “5 and only 5” actions an email might need. Though I’m not a strict adherent to the system he proposes some concepts that I’ve found more helpful than any other system and I’m glad to say that as I write this I have zero messages in my inbox.
Check out this video of a presentation he gave at Google:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=973149761529535925" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a regular podcast entitled “Tech Therapy” and one of their recent episodes “How to Control Your Email Inbox” provides some useful advice.
techtherapy_2009-01-06-175331.mp3
http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v55/i19/techtherapy/
Image credit: Somewhat Frank on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.