Monday morning.
It’s not that I hate this concept in general. In fact, I quite like my job.
It’s the email that does my head in. The unrelenting stack of electronic missives that I’ve dodged for days. Ugh, who am I kidding? Weeks.
Every incoming message is like a drop of Chinese water torture.
For some people, going to meetings, talking on the phone and emailing is the essence of their job. Good for you and your BlackBerry. Email away, hyperthumbs.
That’s not me. The maintenance of this blog and the making of videos is an artistic endeavour – something that requires a lot of solitary concentration. Emails are my enemy, eating into precious time that could be spent on creativity that I want to channel into the blog. This is why musicians, writers and artists go “off the grid” and hide in some cabin in the bush with a paperback and untamed facial hair. How can you write a song with the mental noise of email in the background? I feel as though I haven’t truly concentrated on one thing for a very long time.
Was life this complicated in the days of the rotary phone? I can’t imagine Amazon calling up to say: “Hi, we noticed you recently bought a Jim Henson biography. We’d like to recommend you spend more money with us by purchasing a “John Denver sings with the Muppets” DVD.” Or “This is LinkedIn calling AGAIN with your daily reminder that you that you haven’t accepted the friend request from that stranger who thinks he can capitalize on your connections.”
But email is a reality, and it’s a high maintenance beyotch clawing at me for attention. I must cope somehow. Recently, I’ve been opening a disproportionate number of responses with the ole “sorry I’ve taken so long to respond, but…” This is a sure sign that my incompetence is on the rise.
I deep sixed all the Facebook alerts, which has helped quite a lot. But my latest problem is press releases. Press releases are necessary, but they have a 1 in 200 success rate. This means my inbox is FULL of impersonal pleas for coverage, pretty much all the time.
So my question for you today is: how do you manage your email? Do you set aside a specific amount of time every day to deal with it? Do you delete without even opening emails?
If I get some stellar tips, I’ll compile them into a new blog post so we can all benefit.
For the love of Zeus, please don’t email me your answers. 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You can create filters so that certain emails go directly to a “read later” folder, and have others go to the “read now” folder. It’s not a GREAT solution, but it does help when you want to read personal emails and avoid having to go through those impersonal links.
You’re right re: Facebook, though. I’d suggest stopping Facebook messages, Linked-In(seriously, who uses that site?) and any newsletters you’ve signed up to. I’ve shrunk the spammy messages in my inbox by about 90% just from doing this. It DOES add up.
Reb,
Nicely written and a pleasure to read. Cheers.
Why thank you, Ron!
You shall receive my answer from the mouth of my e-mail!
Until then, this will have to suffice.
First, you have to go with Hotmail. Any other provider and you’ve just made a mistake thatt’ll be hard to live down. Yahoo? Gmail? I just shake my head at that, to the point where I get a concussion.
My Hotmail’s set to exclusive junk. What an idea Gates has come up with. When a message gets in there by mistake I add it to the safe list. At the beginning, I’d lose a lot of e-mail. But now everyone I know’s on that safe list. And if I’m expecting an e-mail from a stranger, I’ll quickly scan the junk mailbox looking for their name.
The best part of the junk folder is ONE click on “Empty junk” gets rid of like 50 spams. Hotmail wins. Email? A joy.
I have three email addresses: work, personal and the one I give out to things like facebook, linkedin, stores, blogs like this, etc. The later I check about twice per year – and it is just a cursory glace through the mounds of spam to see if I have missed anything important. With all of the “crap” going to this fictional account, my personal email account is seldom used and when I see I have mail there I know it is worth reading. As for work, that is a whole other kettle of fish – still working on that one.