Other than automatic notifications I get maybe 15-20 actionable e-mails a day. I don’t envy anybody who gets over 100 e-mails they have to do something with. I’m in the camp where I would prefer to get an e-mail over any other kind of interruption because I am in control. I work in a call center as a supervisor and my desk is right out there in the middle of the work with the minions. I’m constantly interrupted by questions and requests from the people on the front line. People who e-mail me instead of interrupting me jump directly to the top of my Happy List.

A big chunk of my feelings about e-mail is because I’ve gotten really fast at processing both my physical and e-mail inboxen. When I started GTD in February it took me for-darn-ever to get to the bottom of either my electronic or physical box. Now it’s something like 10 minutes.

What drives me crazy now are other people who aren’t as on top of things, either due to circumstances or because they haven’t yet found the religion of The David. My boss considers it a good day when she gets to less than 100 unread. That’s crazy. So I’m constantly interrupting her for decisions that should have been made hours before but weren’t because she hasn’t even read that e-mail yet. Yuck! (It’s pretty clear she has the classic disease of “Do the associated task when you get the mail. So she opens one mail and might spend 20 minutes on it, while 15 more e-mails pile up behind it. I even offered to buy her the GTD for Outlook PDF but I’m talking to myself here. C’est La Vie.)

I’m sure that by now most of the people on 43Folders are familiar with last summer’s notorious “emails hurt IQ more than [smoking] pot.” You’re not? Here’s the link http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq/.

With that as my inspiration, I try my best to put email on the backburner.

I probably get 100 emails a day. Of those, perhaps 10 matter and are actionable. I try to ignore every little ping while my timer is running and I’m working on the latest Next Action. But it doesn’t always work.

I am highly distractable (is that geneitc? or is that why we’re all looking to hack our personal suck), so often, I’ll stop what I’m doing and check the email. Usually, it’s some bulls&*t.

I have found and am wondering if others have found this as well that if I ignore email, and wait until the end of the day to tackle a particular task associated with said email, the task has uh, magically, been taken care of by someone else in my office that couldn’t figure out how to solve the issue in the first place.

This isn’t to say that I am slacking, in any way (I’m not), it’s just that I have priorities and need to take care of them first.

If it’s really, really a critical issue, I would expect a phone call or a visit from the person needing assistance.

I try to empty my email box every day - that is, filing emails into folders where they will live archived for future retrievals. (I wish I could do that with Gmail. I hate the long list format.) Those emails that I haven’t been able to get to either go into Waiting or Someday folders, while the Next Action emails will sit in my email box until I have completed the action.

For me: 70-75 emails, maybe about 50 of them actionable.

Karl: you can achieve the same (similar?) results as filing with Gmail’s labels feature — you label can label an email in the same way that you would file it, and then archive. Then access only the emails with that label via the links in the left-hand bar.

If that doesn’t do it, Gmail supports POP access now :)

Actionable e-mails: Maybe 20. However, in my office we’ve all developed that bad habbit of having total conversations via e-mail. What could be accomplished in a 30 second phone call, or even a chat session ends up taking 4 to 5 back and forth e-mails. We’re lame.

I always know I’m being successful when my Inbox has less than 10 e-mails.

Personal e-mails, I tend to suck at. They sit in my inbox for way to long. I ditched Gmail yesterday for just this reason: messages got totally lost in “conversation” view. I’d love to have the option to view coversation view, or tradition view. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I ditched Gmail because e-mails weren’t getting answered, my contacts were a mess, and there’s still no Gmail Calendar. I’m sure eventually this will get sorted out - in the meantie I feel a bit silly for depending on anything beta.

I telecommute (256 mi ) and am sheepishly confessing that maybe I am getting 10 actionable emails per month.

Perhaps it is because all my co-workers and supervision that need to contact me KNOW that I will be in the office every Friday. Or, perhaps because they know that I will check my email three times a day and WILL respond promptly. Perhaps it may also be that they know I am reachable by Cell Phone 24 hours a day.

lyndonk

Totally agree with Mark Morgan. I just PREFER e-mail to the magically-appearing head over the cube wall sayingwith “hey, quick question!” It takes me at least 10 minutes to get back into the groove of what I was doing, just in time to be interrupted again.

I’ll take 50 actionable e-mails over 50 face to face interruptions any day!

[…] Open Thread: The value and quality of email at work 43 Folders (tags: email work) […]

You know, it’s not the number of e-mail messages I deal with that really gets to me. What gets to me personally is that we use a product, Lotus Notes, which contains arguably great tools for discussion databases and other collaborative tools, but I can’t convince people to use them! In many cases a threaded discussion database is much more effective. Plus, you don’t get the e-mail omission problem: on some replys, Bob and Frank are left out; then on others Tom is added; so not everyone gets every e-mail and it’s not a “team discussion” anymore.

I get plenty; they’re nearly all actionable. That said, I (and the folks in our firm) receive significantly less that our peers in other organizations, and certainly less than our clients.

Why?

1) We put “pull” information where it belongs: On the web. The core of our intranet is a blog, which we use to post any information that would otherwise find its way into an email distribution. If someone’s hosting lunch at Chili’s for Suzie from AR’s birthday or there are Dunkin’ minis in the break room, you need to check the blog to know. And if you miss something important because you don’t read the blog, you’re accountable for the miss.

2) We do a good job of matching message to media based on the principles of “media richness.” (Read more about media richness here). The result is that we spend more time in face-to-face or telephone conversation, which is more efficient than email for a whole range of topics.

Works for us, and thanks to the liberal use of David Allen’s Getting Things Done Outlook add-in across our firm, we nearly all go to bed each night with our inbox an empty box.

Maybe 5 or 10.

For people who get 50 or so, that surely means that even if they spend all day doing nothing but email triggered work, they have to clear each email in about 5 minutes or so, or start falling rapidly and irretrievably behind. That seems amazingly efficient to me. It can take me 5 minutes or more just to get in position to start on the task, let alone complete it.

Looking at the procmail log, over October I got just over 8,000 emails. On average about 250 a day. 20 of which are actionable.

I deal with email in a slightly odd way. Firstly, all email hits my server, gets a little processing by procmail and is forwarded to my gmail a/c. This keeps a backup on the server, anything that is spam is removed from the server, as Gmail will get everything I’m not worried about false positives as my own server is the backup. (Initially Gmail was the back up, but since moving to a new computer I’ve just used the Gmail interface and haven’t yet installed Thunderbird, and doubt now I ever will. I do miss a few features but no tool is perfect, so I just cope with the couple of limitations.)

Quite a few will be discussions on various lists, about a dozen automatic emails a day (reminders, server status things etc), other subscriptions/messages, roughly 60 spams and then finally about 20 actionable items. Using Gmail keeps all the threads on the lists nice and doesn’t overwhelm as all the replies relating to that one posting are all grouped as one. It’s much better for my email khama to see one message, rather than all 30 replies…

I star anything that I have to deal with. I also use labels for various projects/clients.

Anything I want to read later (but will take more than a few minutes) gets labelled and filed. Every time I visit the inbox I empty it. Often this is easy, I see a bunch of emails from a list, and if I’m not going to read them now will just select them all and hit archive. They are still marked as unread should I wish to visit them again later.

My main clients and lists are also automatically labelled.

Once I remove or skim the list emails from the inbox, this may leave me with one or two I need to think about for a second. If I can do it I will and then just archive the mail, otherwise it’ll get stared and I move on with my next action.

The hole here is identifying next actions, but I handle that seperatly to email. I guess the starred emails are really mini-projects.

Lyndonk shouldn’t be sheepish about only receiving 10 actionable e-mails. Apparently she works with and for sane people. When I tried to answer this I was stumped. You see, this week I’ve only received about a dozen actionables; but last week it was about 50; who knows what next week will bring. I sometimes envy folks with predictable lives, but not often. Like some of the other folks who have answered this I work at home, and can schedule my computer time as I see fit. Like dealing with e-mail at 2am in my jammies (or not) with a glass of wine. I sleep better after knowing a) I’ve cleaned out the inbox; b) no one will instantly respond with more work; and c) I’ve had a glass of wine.

I love a good email usage survey…

…and apparently a lot of other folks do, too. ZDNet cites research that indicates that 65% of workers are spending 1 - 3 hours per day in email. This jives with our findings earlier in the year. The spin on

Well: I initially misread the title of this article as ‘The volume and quality of email at work’ - I think that says it all.

Of 30-50 emails a day, 75% are actionable. And I love email - especially now that I’ve gotten better organized about acting on each message in some way the first time I read it. Plus auto-checking only once an hour (amazing how much that has cleared my head.)

The nature of my work is key - I’m sort of the spider in the center of the web, and email is a great tool with the proper organization - which is for me a folder for each event or project, a tickler folder for items I’m waiting for replies on, a current project folder, and the inbox for the instant/urgent tasklist. The “paper trail” of emails helps us all keep track of everything, and at the same time I can actually work constructively if I’m not taking calls all day long. I also communicate with up to 400 people in one message, so email beats USPS mailers hands down - and by in large, most people are functional email users, so they actually receive the information and process it in a timely fashion.

At the same time, 30-50 emails isn’t that much - more would (and has) drained me of my life essence. It’s a nice balance.

About 50 per day. 10-15 that can be acted on in less than 2 minutes. 2-3 that require more attention.

I prefer email becuase I have the information to refer to later and can delegate with a simple forward. Plus people have to condense their thoughts in an email where a hallway conversation can drag on, and on, and on. (Of course, some hallway or lunch conversations are incredibly productive but that’s another topic).

My filing system is simple. All emails go into Action (needs to be acted on but takes more than 2 minutes), Hold (reference), or Timed (reference that will have no value in a few weeks like conference call numbers or meeting agenda). All other are dealt with in 2 minutes or deleted. I treat it like a video game - if the messages reach the bottom of the screen, I lose.

Writing clear, actionable emails and directing them to the right people is a critical skill in our organization. Proper use of the subject line and clear, action oriented statements are critical. Spending years working in an organization where English is not your coworkers’ first language is a great learning experience.

My guess is that I get 30-50 real (read: from people I know and related to work) emails a day. Of these about half are actionable.

Even though half are actionable, I would say at least 75% would probably resolve themselves if I ignored them completely.

I would say at least 75% would probably resolve themselves if I ignored them completely

My God, that’s so true, Dave.

It’s partly why I only check my email hourly; an astounding number of “problems” resolve themselves without intervention within 59 minutes.

I get about 10-20 actionable e-mails a day. I’m a real believer in Outlook rules and dragging stuff off into a “cleared” folder the instant I can ditch an e-mail. And most e-mail can be replied to with a one-liner or ignored altogether (i.e. it’s a cc I didn’t need in the first place or don’t need to reply to).

That said, I usually write or forward about 30-50 work e-mails a day. I try not to do it unless it’s necessary; even so, I work with some very e-mail centric people…

What a question. In terms of daily email, mine can reach well in to the hundreds. I have had it pass the 1,000 point mark (rarely, but it has happened). Actionable emails can top 100+ a day pretty regularly.

What I find helpful in managing my email “best” is to include at the beginning of the email a note like: Thanks for your note. To help my reply flow more easily, I’ll answer your message in the context of your questions below….

Then under each part of an email that needs a response where I am replying back I would start with my name like such…

Josh: yada, yada, yad, this is my reply (whatever I put here would just be my answer).

I’d repeat the idea above no matter how many different things I need to address in the particular email. I think it makes things flow a lot easier then simply replying to an entire email at the top.

Finally, I will simply delete (strip out) parts of the email that I don’t need to address. I find doing that helps a lot to keep emails from getting extra long. Anyway, hopefully this is helpful… Josh :-)

I’m with a small company, where we do a lot of collaborative work through email. I think we take advantage of all of its benefits (asynchronicity, precision, archivability, and immediacy) without letting it get out of hand. We’re still only talking about 10-20 a day of relevant messages, not counting auto msgs and lists and that sort of thing.

The problem is that if you aren’t in the same email groove as the rest of us, it stops working. We had a recent (remote) hire who just couldn’t keep up (or maybe he was just letting things get resolved without him as someone said above). It would take him days to respond to requests through email. Often, yes, after the issue had been dealt with without him.

I don’t understand the attitude of companies that have an “email-free Friday,” or just generally think email is too heavily relied on. Surely the problem isn’t email itself, it’s that people need to learn how to manage it.