Question: How much information does the average mind consume in a given day? Answer: 34 gigabytes. According to a University of California-San Diego study mentioned in The New York Times, the average American consumes 34 GB of content every day, including a whopping 100,000 words of information.
Of course, we are not fully aware of the 100,000 words per day necessarily, but that rather astounding figure does cross our eyes and ears within each 24-hour interval via multiple channels: the Web, TV, text messaging, email, radio, video games and more.
In all, we spend about 11.8 hours per day absorbing mass quantities of information, sometimes multitasking in front of multiple screens simultaneously. It’s nothing short of an attack. For many, just keeping up with the daily onslaught of email is a challenge. In fact, experts have estimated that e-mail adds an extra 1.23 hours to each day. This is no different if you are a student, employee, business owner, high level executive, or housewife. We all face a constant barrage of communication and a significant portion of it comes to us disguised as friendly email.
Is it just me, or will those annoying "Congrats! You just won the (insert name of a foreign country here) Lottery" messages never end? The constant assault by email continues despite many of our best efforts to “un-subscribe” and the installation of incredibly sophisticated SPAM filters.
How much time are you losing?
If you multiply 1.23 hours times 5 days a week over 52 weeks, that's 320 hours each year spent just "handling" e-mail. Not surprisingly, I personally spent twice that this year. Time to rein it in and admit we're all spending too much time on our email. One study estimated that time lost to email has pushed U.S. workers (who shave the time elsewhere) into a widespread productivity crunch.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the average worker spends as much as four hours a day sending and receiving e-mail. Of those four hours, one hour is spent on the 36 percent of messages that are completely irrelevant. How wasteful is that? But, how do you survive your own in-box?
Start managing your email before it manages you
* Turn off e-mail alarms and prompts. Many people use prompts set to go off upon the arrival of e-mail. Don't be fooled by that charming depiction in the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film, You've Got Mail. Prompts are simply interruptions that make some of us respond like Pavlov’s dogs every time we hear it. Turning off the chime keeps us from interrupting what we are doing to read non-urgent e-mail (usually) in the midst of our projects.
* Plan to read and respond to e-mail on a schedule. Create a proactive method of managing the mail time. Dedicate a specific day-part to sifting through e-mail. Do not check it first thing in the morning! In doing so, you become reactive for the rest of the day. You want to be proactive. Spend the first hour every morning working on your most important project or planning the day.
* Determine how much time you are spending on e-mail; then cut that in half. Deadlines make people work more efficiently. Spending half of your allocated email time in the morning just before lunch, and the other half just before you finish for the day is one strategy. Setting a time constraint forces you to prioritize. For students, spending more than an hour a day on email is a waste of precious class, study, reading, research, writing time. Any email not answered is probably not important. Delete or archive your messages in folders for reference.
* Direct the flow of communication. Most email programs, like Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, allow you to create folders that mirror a paper filing system. This reinforces any plan for storage and retrieval of important information. In addition, you can indicate which folders reflect active projects and change your e-mail settings to direct e-mail with certain project-related language to those folders. Added bonus: while many e-mail systems impose limits on your in-box size, they do not constrict space in folders.
* Use your storage. For e-mail that needs to be kept for longer periods of time, create an electronic filing cabinet, several folders with category names that match your physical office files. Use Word or any program you like. Back-up often.
* Save the most recent only. Delete early strings in an email chain and just keep the most current message to avoid saving several redundant messages.
* Just save the attachment. If an e-mail comes with an attachment, that is likely all you really need, so just save the attachment file. Delete the message that came with it.
* Control the flow of exchange. People often feel they must respond to every email instantly. Take time to consider proper responses. Slow down the flow of email coming to you. Don't respond if it is not necessary.
* Refrain from sending irrelevant e-mail. Along the same line, be careful not to send a message just because it’s quick or convenient. This applies to e-mail and regular correspondence – if it doesn’t have to be said, don’t say it.
* Create templates. If you frequently send the same types of emails, create templates that you can use over and over (changing only the specifics each time).
* Start a ritual. Every Friday afternoon, become ruthless. Delete all email you no longer need, and save those you do need for only one week, if possible. Use those personal folders, and save anything you need to keep in another kind of document. Review items in your folders and delete those that are no longer necessary. Make this a weekly habit and e-mail suddenly becomes a lot more manageable. You can also do the same thing at the end of every day, if that is easier for you.
These tips are just common sense, of course, but surprisingly few people actually implement any of them. Does this mean we are content with being more reactive than proactive? I think not. It's really about the level of information overload currently happening in all our lives.
Organizing email, like any organizational behavior, allows you to be more productive - to better utilize your time and energy. So, go ahead. Stop the madness. Do what it takes to gain control of your in-box. The University of California study goes on to break down which of the media tend to occupy our time. The big winner is still television at almost 45 percent of our daily allowance, but the computer is a not-too-distant second at about 27 percent.
Remember, email is just a communications tool. It was developed to make life easier, not drive you crazy.
Kevin: I remember those days, too - when my assistant had a message book and I actually called everybody back and forged real relationships with everyone I worked with. I never thought I would be calling those the good ole days, but there was something much more personal about my business communications back then. Thanks for joining the conversation!
Posted by: Elizabeth Thomas | December 14, 2009 at 10:37 AM
Great Info. When I started my career - no email. Just little pink notes to return calls. More time was spent selling not reading and responding to every email, every minute.
Posted by: Kevin Halbleib | December 13, 2009 at 09:25 PM
Louanne - You are very welcome!
Therran - Things surely could be much worse. With great technology comes great responsibility, so we just have to watch our time management. (Hey, did I just quote Spiderman?)
Ann, Lorie and Kenneth - Thanks for much for reading. I hope my tips are helpful. Lorie - The truth is I don't know how we got by before email!
Posted by: Elizabeth Thomas | December 12, 2009 at 03:05 PM
Elizabeth, I have really enjoyed your writing throughout this Blog-Off. Each article you've posted has taught me something or made me think about something, or caused a smile. You clearly write to informative, but you'r also fun to read. I must also admit, my email has gotten the better of me recently. I like the idea of figuring out how much time I'm spending on it and then cutting that in half. I'm actually going to try and implement a couple of these strategies...Awfully smart blogging!
Posted by: Kenneth | December 12, 2009 at 01:10 PM
Interesting info Elizabeth. Can you imagine how much time we spent communicating prior to e-mail?
Posted by: Lorie | December 12, 2009 at 10:59 AM
Good to see more suggestions on managing e-mail. I recently changed to a new e-mail program with a PC upgrade and the administrator told me my 6000 plus saved e-mails should be cut down a bit! I've done a few of the tips, but saw others I will also use. Great post! Terry Holmes
Posted by: Terry Holmes | December 12, 2009 at 09:16 AM
Elizabeth,
This is an awesome post. I'm an information junkie. I have to stop myself from checking my BlackBerry when having a verbal conversation with people. I get so much "stuff" that it's hard not to check constantly.
I like your strategies, but they will take discipline for us info junkies...it's my drug of choice. I guess there could be worse things!!?
Posted by: Therran Oliphant | December 12, 2009 at 12:13 AM
I agree that creating folders within the email system is very helpful in organizing information. When I take the time to label the emails I want to keep and immediately move them into the appropriate folders, then I find the barrage more manageable. Thanks for the reminder that email is just a tool and not a life-or-death situation!!
Posted by: N. Louanne Young | December 11, 2009 at 05:24 PM
Tim, I'm right there with you! I'm thinking of finding a 12-step program to help me take a giant step back from my email inbox. Ann, if I find one that will also help with eBay, I'll let you know.
Glynn, Dave, and David, I appreciate that you took the time to join this conversation. You each make excellent points. I think it's definitely time to invest in a better spam filter!
Posted by: Elizabeth Thomas | December 11, 2009 at 04:22 PM
Thanks Al Gore for contributing to the further cluttering of our minds. He did invent the Internet, right? Sorry ET, couldn't resist. Excellent piece and helpful insight.
Posted by: Dave | December 11, 2009 at 03:21 PM
Excellent information!
Email is not my problem however, Ebay is the current monkey on my back!
But seriously, I have researched internet addiction (from my Mac of course, lol!) and it's no joke.
Taking back any kind of control from the evil machine is a victory. Your post goes a loooong way in helping one take the power back ; )
Thanks E!
Posted by: Ann | December 11, 2009 at 03:16 PM
I'm addicted to email lol. PLEASE HELP!!!!
-Addicted.
Posted by: Tim | December 11, 2009 at 03:09 PM
I sure am glad I am not part of the norm and wasting those hours at the email counter. A good junk mail filter saves me everyday the time to delete all the no sense useless information in 99% of the emails I get.
Posted by: david | December 11, 2009 at 02:45 PM
I have incorporated e-mail and various forms of social media into my teaching activities. Yes, it is incredibly time consuming! On the positive side, the quality of communication is probably much better. I can communicate with more students more often, and I can give more immediate feedback (something that is important in a world of immediate gratification). Is it worth it? The most probable answer is "It Depends!"
Posted by: Glynn Mangold | December 11, 2009 at 02:32 PM
J - Personally, I think my mental hard drive was only formatted for about 15 GB, so the information overload is often all too real. I am curious as to how the researchers calculated that 34 GB. Certainly, the world is throwing more and more information at all of us. I find myself curious as to how much of it is really sticking.
It's nice to hear someone has mastered the art of email management. That's the way to do it!
Posted by: Elizabeth Thomas | December 11, 2009 at 12:44 PM
That University of California SD statistic was a surprise. If everyone were downloading/consuming 34 GB of digital content every day that would total 680 GB each month (if you only did this during the work week) and over a terrabyte if they really mean EVERY day. Wow -- your Internet Service Providers would have a fit. The evil ones like Comcast are trying to cap the 'heavy' users at 200 GB per month. My guess is that our friends in San Diego overdid their calculations!
Your tip about turning off email checking and alerts should be enshrined in all-caps (and probably deserves its own blog entry). I did that last year and it was a huge game changer for me. Now, I purposefully check my email once or twice a day and am no longer a slave to it. I can't tell you what that's done for my productivity and work-flow.
J
Posted by: Jeff Butterfield | December 11, 2009 at 11:44 AM