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Summer 2006
1. Guest Article -
Hoarders vs. Deleters
2. The Email Solution: One of Five Decisions
3. What You Sow Is What You Reap
4. Your Organizer Quoted in Woman’s Day Magazine
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“Hoarders vs. Deleters –You are Your Inbox”
by Jeff Zaslow appeared in the Wall Street Journal August 10,
2006. This is such a good article about email and multitasking
that I’ve included it in full below:
Take a clear-eyed look at how you answer or file each email. Notice
what you choose to keep or delete. Consider your anxiety when
your inbox is jammed with unanswered messages.
The makeup and tidiness of your inbox is a reflection of your
habits, your mental health and, yes, even the way Mom and Dad
raised you.
"If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean
you keep your life cluttered in other ways," says psychologist
Dave Greenfield, who founded the Center for Internet Behavior
in West Hartford, Conn. "Do you cling to the past? Do you
have a lot of unfinished business in your life?"
On the other hand, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10
minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities
and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping
your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.
Email addiction, of course, is now a cultural given. But a less-noticed
byproduct of that is the impulse of the inbox. Some of us are
obsessed with moving every email to an appropriate folder while
killing junk "spam" on arrival and making sure Mom knows
that we got her email and still love her. Meanwhile, others among
us are e-procrastinators -- modern-day Scarlett O'Haras who figure
we'll deal with old email tomorrow. We're discovering that the
disorder in our inboxes mirrors the disorder in our homes, marriages
and checkbooks.
A few months ago, Scott Stratten was suffering from what he terms
"inbox paralysis." A marketing consultant in Oakville,
Ontario, he had 500 old messages in his inbox, all needing responses.
"I felt so guilty, I couldn't even bring myself to open my
email," he says.
In desperation, he decided to delete all his messages. He then
sent an email blast to 400 people on his contact list, telling
them a lie. He made up a story that his Internet service provider
had informed him that some emails weren't getting through -- and
that was why friends and clients never heard back from him. "People
were very empathetic," he says, "and it allowed me to
start fresh."
Mr. Stratten describes what he did as "pure evil," but
he also calls it a turning point. He realized he had to find a
better way to ease his guilt over not coming through for people.
He is now hiring an assistant who will handle his email.
Those who are too nice in other areas of their lives may be more
likely to struggle with unwieldy inboxes, says Merlin Mann, creator
of 43folders.com, a Web site about personal productivity. Polite
people (or those who want to be liked) feel obliged to participate
in ping-pong correspondences with chatty friends. They haven't
the heart to give anyone the no-response brush-off. But Mr. Mann
says such ruthlessness is necessary.
He says he uses a few dozen "templates" to answer email
-- prewritten form letters in which he inserts a person's name
or a personalized comment. He also empties his inbox hourly. "You
have to treat your inbox like you treat your mailbox at home,"
he says. "You wouldn't store your bills inside your mailbox.
And leaving spam in your inbox is like leaving garbage in your
kitchen."
On the work front, you're most at risk for inbox clutter if you're
the type who can't say "no," warns Nancy Flynn, executive
director of the ePolicy Institute, a consulting firm. When you're
quick to respond with offers of help, "people use email to
turn their crisis into your emergency," she says.
In Greensboro, N.C., Internet consultant Wally Bock keeps his
inbox down to a manageable few dozen messages. He credits his
sense of order to "having disciplined parents who made that
a value." Still, he recognizes the downside. Many "Inbox
Zero" zealots interrupt their work every time they hear a
ping announcing incoming email. "Multitasking is a misnomer,"
says Mr. Bock. "What you're really doing is switching rapidly
between tasks. And every time you switch, you have to start up
again. Over the course of a day, you lose a chunk of efficiency."
A saner way to pare down an inbox is to move email into folders
-- by subject or need for follow-up -- and once a week set aside
time for inbox housekeeping. That's advice from Marilyn Paul,
author of "It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't
Find Your Keys," a book for the chronically disorganized.
She also suggests using the inbox alphabetizing feature, which
organizes all email by sender. "That allows you to delete
1,000 emails an hour," she says.
University of Toronto instructor Christina Cavanagh studied hundreds
of office workers for her book "Managing Your Email: Thinking
Outside the Inbox." One of her subjects, a finance executive,
had 10,000 emails in his inbox. She advised him to simply delete
the oldest 9,000. Busy people, drowning in email, may have no
choice but to kill old messages and suffer the consequences. (Mr.
Mann calls this "euthanasia.")
Because "inboxes are metaphors for our lives," Dr. Greenfield
says, there's no cure-all solution to inbox management. We're
all too different. But he believes an awareness of our inbox behavior
can help us better understand other areas of our lives.
"If you have 1,000 emails in your inbox, it may mean you
don't want to miss an opportunity, but there are things you can't
pull the trigger on," Dr. Greenfield says. "If you have
only 10 emails in your inbox, you may be pulling the trigger too
fast and missing the richness of life.”
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Solution to Stop Inbox Overflow: Make One of Five Decisions
1. Delete. This choice will be applicable to a good portion (50%
or more would be a conservative estimate) of email.
2. Forward. Applies when you can delegate the action needed. Often,
someone else can do the task just as well, if not better, than
you.
3. Reply Now. If you can answer in 2 or 3 minutes, respond right
now. I recommend you silence your email bell so you won’t
be interrupted constantly. Train yourself to review and respond
to email at regular intervals in your day.
4. Move to a folder for reference. This clears your inbox of information
that is valuable but is not needed right now. You’ll be
pleasantly surprised at the weight this removes from your psyche.
5. File for Follow-up. Print the email to remind yourself to place
a call, and file in a tickler/date file, or a permanent action
file labeled ‘Call.’ For ezines, you can move to a
‘Read’ folder. Print and place the ezine in a ‘grab
and go’ reading file.
There is always more than one way to look at solving problems.
But start here and let me know how it’s working for you.
And guess what? These same five decisions work with paper too.
Just change the action words, i.e. delete becomes discard or toss.
What We Sow Is What We Reap. No, I did not think this
up. This is a universal law that I first learned about in The
Bible. Another way to say it is “You get what you send out.”
You may have heard of it as The Law of Attraction. Let me tell
you a little story:
While growing up in Vacaville, California, my mother encouraged
me to write letters. With my mother’s example, it was easy
to learn the art of letter writing. I liked writing and riding
my bike to the corner mailbox, where I would deposit our letter
to Grandma with a five cent stamp affixed. Letter writing became
a part of my life. Over the years, letter writing took a back
seat to the telephone. Nowadays, it’s a rare day when we
receive a real letter in the mail with a real stamp.
When I started It’s About Time in 2000, I continued to practice
communicating with notes to express thanks, offer congratulations,
and remember birthdays. As my business grew, it became harder
to have the supplies on hand, to remember important dates. My
intentions were good, but I often fell short on my lifelong practice.
Enter “Send Out Cards.” This winter I received an
unexpected card after being involved in serious car accident.
Thankfully, I walked away from the accident, but the aftershock
was great. So was the chest pain from the impact of the airbag.
I was touched that my friend took the time to extend wishes of
full recovery in a personal message, in her handwriting and signature.
Email is convenient, but it doesn’t carry the impact of
a sincere note. Everyone sends email. Few separate themselves
from the pack with real greeting cards.
Now that I’ve started using Send Out Cards, I’m getting
back on track. The convenience and card selection (7,500) can’t
be beat. Type a personal message from your desk, and the card
goes out the next morning, in your handwriting! When you send
out positive energy, you make others feel good. Because of the
universal law of giving and receiving, the giver gains as well.
But I need your help. I’d like to remember your birthday.
You can tell me very quickly by typing your birthday in the reply
line. No need to include the year.
You can learn about Send Out Cards on my website. Visit www.marylynnemurray.com
and click on the button for ‘Send Out Cards.’ Complete
the online form, or call me @ 925-933-9737 and we’ll set
up your gift account on the phone.
Your Organizer Quoted in Woman’s Day Magazine. I
was recently quoted in the September 2006 issue. The article,
called Clutter Control 101 by Diane Benson Harrington, is located
on page 81. Sorry, it’s not available online at this time.
Your time is valuable; thank you very much for taking
the time to read Etips.
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