Lawrence Lessig on "email bankruptcy"

Wired 14.08: How To: Be More Productive

I love Lawrence Lessig’s plan for email bankruptcy from the latest WIRED.

1) Collect the email addresses of everyone you haven’t replied to. Paste them into the BCC field of a new message you’ll send to yourself.

2) Write a polite note explaining your predicament. Apologize profusely – Lessig managed five mea culpas in as many paragraphs – and promise to keep up with your email in the future. Try to sound credible.

3) Ask for a resend of anything particularly pressing, and offer to give such messages special attention.

I realize this kind of thing really irritates people with either excellent email skills, high expectations, or low net email volume, but – as in “real” bankruptcy – this looks like a terrific way to get a fresh start.

It’s kind of a more public version of the Email DMZ, but with the very useful extra benefit of not having to ever read the sequestered messages. And as someone who’s frequently more behind than he’d like, that’s a pretty appealing proposition.

[ via Lifehacker ]