Why should alcoholics have all the fun? Now email addicts have their own 12 step program to take back control of their lives.
If you're drowning in your inbox, "executive coach" Marsha Egan offers a 12 step plan to managing your email, reports Reuters.
Amazingly, Egan recommends turning off automatic send/receive and checking your email not more than three or four times a day! That's just insane. She seems to assume that nothing important comes via email. Would she go for hours without answering the phone? I would, but only because I've training people only to email me. My voice mail message practically says "bugger off and send me an email instead". It works, I love it.
Why should I go back to synchronous communications such as the telephone? Why should I stop everything just because it suits some fool to call me right now? How on earth can that be more productive than an inbox that lets me prioritise my responses and deal with fools when I have the time.
Egan cites an example of a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot, and lost a potential client who wanted nothing to do with his obsession. This guy doesn't have an email problem, he has a *problem*, full stop. He needs a therapist, not an empty inbox.
Anyway, Egan's 12 steps are as follows;
1. Admit that email is managing you. Let go of your need to check email every ten minutes.
2. Commit to keeping your inbox empty.
Hang on, don't those two contradict each other? Not a good start.
3. Create files where you can put inbox material that needs to be acted on.
4. Make broad headings for your filing system so that you have to spend less time looking for filed material.
Okay, 3 and 4 are basic stuff, but I guess some people might not have figured them out yet.
5. Deal immediately with any email that can be handled in two minutes or less but create a file for mails that will take longer.
Isn't that why you check your email every few minutes, so you can quickly deal with things and keep your inbox under control?
6. Set a target date to empty your inbox. Don't spend more than an hour at a time doing it.
Shouldn't that target date be right now? What if there's important stuff in there?
7. Turn off automatic send/receive.
If you rely on email to make a living, this is professional suicide. It's like permanently muting the ringer on your cellphone.
8. Establish regular times to review your email.
Again, would "normal" people wait hours before checking their phone messages?
9. Involve others in conquering your addiction.
How? Send your friends an email to tell them how you've stopped using email? Seriously, how many friends would you have left if you stopped returning their emails?
10. Reduce the amount of email you receive.
How? Give spammers your cellphone number so they can ring you at work instead?
11. Save time by using only one subject per email; delete extra comments from forwarded e-mail, and make the subject line detailed.
"Only one subject per email"? WTF does 11 even mean?
12. Celebrate taking a new approach to email.
Seems to me she got to 11 and ran out of things to say. Now *that* I can relate to.
If you're drowning in your inbox, "executive coach" Marsha Egan offers a 12 step plan to managing your email, reports Reuters.
Amazingly, Egan recommends turning off automatic send/receive and checking your email not more than three or four times a day! That's just insane. She seems to assume that nothing important comes via email. Would she go for hours without answering the phone? I would, but only because I've training people only to email me. My voice mail message practically says "bugger off and send me an email instead". It works, I love it.
Why should I go back to synchronous communications such as the telephone? Why should I stop everything just because it suits some fool to call me right now? How on earth can that be more productive than an inbox that lets me prioritise my responses and deal with fools when I have the time.
Egan cites an example of a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot, and lost a potential client who wanted nothing to do with his obsession. This guy doesn't have an email problem, he has a *problem*, full stop. He needs a therapist, not an empty inbox.
Anyway, Egan's 12 steps are as follows;
1. Admit that email is managing you. Let go of your need to check email every ten minutes.
2. Commit to keeping your inbox empty.
Hang on, don't those two contradict each other? Not a good start.
3. Create files where you can put inbox material that needs to be acted on.
4. Make broad headings for your filing system so that you have to spend less time looking for filed material.
Okay, 3 and 4 are basic stuff, but I guess some people might not have figured them out yet.
5. Deal immediately with any email that can be handled in two minutes or less but create a file for mails that will take longer.
Isn't that why you check your email every few minutes, so you can quickly deal with things and keep your inbox under control?
6. Set a target date to empty your inbox. Don't spend more than an hour at a time doing it.
Shouldn't that target date be right now? What if there's important stuff in there?
7. Turn off automatic send/receive.
If you rely on email to make a living, this is professional suicide. It's like permanently muting the ringer on your cellphone.
8. Establish regular times to review your email.
Again, would "normal" people wait hours before checking their phone messages?
9. Involve others in conquering your addiction.
How? Send your friends an email to tell them how you've stopped using email? Seriously, how many friends would you have left if you stopped returning their emails?
10. Reduce the amount of email you receive.
How? Give spammers your cellphone number so they can ring you at work instead?
11. Save time by using only one subject per email; delete extra comments from forwarded e-mail, and make the subject line detailed.
"Only one subject per email"? WTF does 11 even mean?
12. Celebrate taking a new approach to email.
Seems to me she got to 11 and ran out of things to say. Now *that* I can relate to.
