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Dealing with overdetermined E-mails

Forgive the bad psychobabble joke, what I'm talking about is an E-mail that simultaneously informs you of 15 conferences, any of which may or may not be relevant. I get these at University but I assume that people elsewhere get something similar; a giant E-mail with many parts, only some of which is relevant. The initial problem is that it's "stuff" that defies the 2 minute rule--each item might take 2 minutes just to consider.

But it's not so important how long the processing takes, it's more a question of how to track it afterwards. Do you print off a copy and put it in several places in a tickler with different parts circled? Save it into different files in a digital tickler? Relevant information straight into a calendar?

I'm interested because sometimes the conferences are not for months to come, and I may or may not be interested, but want to think about it again later. The problem is, saving a massive E-mail like this isn't very conducive to that, because when I see it again, some of the dates will have past--and as Allen predicts, my mind goes numb to these E-mails, which especially after a week or two, mix actionables and non-actionables.

Craig's picture

I'd process the items on...

I'd process the items on arrival by copying item info on my lists/calendars etc, with a note that more info is in the mail archive. Then I'd move the email into my mail archive. I'd be sure to use language straight from the message to make it easier to find with a search later. E.g.:

SOMEDAY/MAYBE.TXT
[INDENT]Go to "Cat Shaving Tips" Workshop in Baltimore in June?[/INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT]Reg deadline March 1. Schedule of speakers in mail Short-term archive[/INDENT][/INDENT]

When I'm reviewing my someday/maybes, I can simply open my mail program and search for "cat shaving" to call up the message in the archive (and if necessary, use Find "cat shaving" within the message) to get to that info.

 
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