April 29, 2011
OPEN Forum Message
Social Media for Business 2012
Learn which social media tools are best for your business, whether or not you should buy Facebook fans and much more.
Read more
E-mail is not dead. Just ask TechCrunch king, Michael Arrington. At one point Arrington revealed through his blog that he had over 2,400 unread e-mails in his inbox and another 721 unread messages in his Facebook inbox—well over two thousand unread messages. What is the world coming to if the technological elite can’t keep up?
Arrington is not alone. Every day entrepreneurs carry the weight of thousands of unanswered e-mails and the problem takes its toll on them professionally and emotionally. Not only are they are missing out on untold opportunities by not being responsive, they are in a constant state of heightened stress, panic and guilt.
Spinning Out of Control
Donald Rubin* is the CEO of a software firm and a venture capital professional and an e-mail hoarder—14,651 unread messages to be exact. 1,535 of which have been flagged as important.
Want to read more about e-mail? Check these out:
Rubin has tried to use technology to climb out of the rubble, to no avail. He activated all available spam filter options. It resulted in an exclusive whitelist filtering his e-mail automatically through 88 separate rules, 102 individual folders, and three dozen project folders. And he still ends up with over 150 e-mails in inbox every single day.
“I’m a really sick puppy. Some day I’m gonna get out of this crazy business and go live on a desert island with no Internet connection,” he said.
Many entrepreneurs want to bail on e-mail, but for most the act of declaring e-mail bankruptcy—deleting everything and starting fresh—isn’t an option.
What the Experts Say
Timothy Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Work Week and more recently, The Four-Hour Body, teaches readers how to get to check e-mail once every 10 days. He suggests that you send a short note to your network, that can also be set-up as an autoresponder, which informs people that you will only be checking your e-mail every 10 days and how to reach out to you in the interim. Ferriss actually walks the talk on this. I know Tim and, depending on when you send him e-mail, it does take him two weeks to get back to you.
David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, presents a management system to help business owners and executives “get to zero,” which means nothing in your inbox and no ideas floating around in your head. With a combination of specialized to-do lists, daily and weekly processes, Allen’s system slices through mounds of paper like a Ginsu knife.
There are software solutions like Palo Alto Software’s E-mail Center Pro, which addresses the challenge that many small businesses have of responding to, managing, assigning and tracking e-mail that comes into general inboxes like sales@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com.
The Last Word on E-mail
E-mail overload isn’t going to be spontaneously solved by installing software or adopting one guru’s approach. When one system doesn’t work, try another until you land on an approach that works for you. E-mail is here to stay—at least for the time being.
*not his real name
Check your balance, review recent transactions and pay your bill on the go.
Lena West 9 months ago
@Olinda - yes, I agree, to each his own. What works for a "lifestyle cowboy" may not work for someone in a traditional business.
@Levi, great post about how your company was spending time. It's a real eye-opener once you start counting hours and resources, eh? Great post about how best to use Outlook -- I forwarded it on to one of our clients. I'm a fan of zero inbox, too. Most nights I get it down to just three, but that's better than most.
Thanks to you both for reading and commenting!