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Email Overload - Not At My Desk All Day
illuscat | Mar 26 2007
My problem is with communication. I'm an academic teaching at two different schools and working another job directing an educational program. I have three different workplaces and no office (except at home). Between my different roles, I get a lot of email and a good deal of voicemail in a given week. During the workday, I'm often in the classroom, in transit, or in seclusion, trying to get papers graded (I teach writing). Because of this, I'm admittedly hard to reach. I feel terrible for making people wait for my responses, and I worry that it causes my professional reputation to suffer, but unless I ignore my other duties, I just can't devote an hour or more each day to getting that inbox to empty. This is complicated by the fact that many things in my inbox are requests I might have to say no to. How do I respond to the 12th student this week to ask for a last-minute letter of recommendation when deep down, I know I don't have the time to do it? The result is that my email has become an unhappy, guilt-ridden place to visit, reminding me of all the people who probably think I have some somehow failed them. Then, even when I do have time, I just don't want to go there... Any suggestions? 10 Comments
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 I'm also an academic and...Submitted by RM66 on April 8, 2007 - 9:17am.
I'm also an academic and had the same problems with letting my e-mail Inbox become a cluttered mess until it drove me nuts and I spent three hours cleaning it out. In addition to telling students that I generally don't answer my e-mail between 5 p.m and 9 a.m. during the week or at all on the week-ends, I have found MailTags and MailActOn a godsend. In addition to being much more creative about my filters, I now use MailTag keywords to move messages into Smart Folders. I use the keywords "Answer", "Read", "Act-on", "Check-on", "Due", "Reference" and "Meeting" and have corresponding Smart Folders for each of these. I process every e-mail the first time I see it--I either dump it, move it to an archive or tag it with one or more of the above. I then move everything to a "Current" folder that holds any messages I haven't deleted for 6 mos. before they get moved to a longer-term archive. That way, the InBox is empty, but the messages are saved somewhere if I need to see them. Anything that's been tagged is automatically in a Smart Folder that I deal with when I have a chance. I also use the MailTag function to link certain items (like Meetings) to the relevant ICal calendar--that creates a little redundancy since it's in my Mail.app and ICal, but that way I'm much less likely to miss something. It's been hard to really make sure and process each e-mail the first time I see it because I don't always know exactly what I want to do with it, but, it is definitely the case that e-mail has become much less stressful to deal with and I think I'm spending less time on it. I also hid the Dock on my Mac so that I can't see if a new message has come in--that way I look at Mail.app a lot less. This is one area where implementing GTD-style workflows has truly changed the way I work for the better. It doesn't help with turning down a rec. letter request, but it does move it out of your immediate eyesight. » POSTED IN:
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