Unload Email Overload: How to Master Email Communications, Unload Email Overload and Save Your Precious Time!

By Bob O’Hare

Email steals too much of your precious time, doesnt it?

Processing email takes way too much time because we never learned to manage it effectively. We are constantly interrupted, invest countless hours in it, re-read emails that languish in our inbox, store email we dont need and suffer from email overload. Dont you agree?

This book provides what you need to manage email, eliminate the overload and save your precious time. It will help you minimize interruption, overcome indecision and empty your inbox. It will help you organize priorities and manage time, so you can get your work doneat work. You can give up doing email at dinner and in bed. Good idea?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452552262

Bob O’Hare

Bob, the engineer, developed computer communication systems and one of the first PCs. After that career in digital technology, Bob did postgraduate work in organization development and founded Performance Improvement Technologies, Inc. to facilitate corporate change and coach executives. Concern by professionals and management about email overload and productivity loss encouraged Bob to seek a solution for these issues. He developed the MasteringEmail™ methodology so knowledge workers and professionals can achieve the benefits of email without the burden. Bob wrote chapter eight for upper management to explore productivity issues. Bob and his wife, Carol, two married children and three grandchildren, live and work in the Philadelphia area.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 Bob O’Hare

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5224-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5226-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5225-5 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012909488

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Balboa Press rev. date: 10/29/2012

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

One Principles

Two Processing Method

Three Personalizing Your Email Experience

Four Detailed Inbox Processing

Five Sending an Email

Six Group and Team Email

Seven Special Applications

Eight Exploring Productivity: A Guide for Managers

Appendix Mastering Email™ At-A-Glance

About the Author

Dedication

I dedicate this book to you, the reader, and to the thousands of individuals all over the world who are suffering the burden of email overload, receiving hundreds of questionable emails every day and losing countless hours of your lives trying to keep up. Here’s to you and your newfound freedom.

I dedicate this book to you, the corporate executive, who feels the pain of productivity loss due to social networking, Smartphone technology, information overload and email distraction. I wrote chapter eight for you.

Preface

Out of college with an engineering degree, I changed vacuum tubes the size of 12-ounce water bottles to repair the Univac II, one of the earliest electronic computers. I later developed and sold communication terminals so computer users could interface directly with computer power. In 1976, at Digilog Corporation, when computers were still physically large and communication terminals were connected to computers through acoustic couplers at 130 bits per second, I developed the concept of a small, low-cost, fully integrated desktop computer. We used CP-M software, the predecessor to MS-DOS, and one of Intel’s early integrated circuit processors, the 8080. It was one of the first personal computers.

I tell you this this because I am proud to have participated in the development of digital technology, which has revolutionized global communications. People and organizations can connect and communicate quickly, cheaply and more effectively. Digital technology has made the world a smaller, better place.

My attention now is focused on the proliferation of Smartphone technology, tablets and iPads, social networking, email communications and information overload.

I conducted a short survey of my own with my coaching clients and business acquaintances to determine for myself if there was enough evidence to justify writing this book. The 30 responses mirrored what had been revealed to me in extensive studies by others. To begin with, the sheer volume of email, with its attendant carbon copies and convoluted history threads, is excessive and getting worse, gobbling up precious time while often accomplishing nothing. Workers are treating email as a priority that has to be dealt with immediately, at the expense of the work they are being paid to do. The ever-present Smartphone and the desire to be connected all the time has become stressful, costly, disruptive and a detriment to maintaining a healthy balance between work and life.

In short, email, a great communication tool, is being relied upon disproportionately to the increasing exclusion of other communications tools, such as the telephone and one-on-one conversations; and it’s being managed ineffectively, which further contributes to information overload and the experience of email as a burden.

Many people may blog an idea or two about resolving the issue. Good for them! It helps all of us. My approach, a little different, has been to develop a methodology which, when practiced, will change behavior, help achieve the best value from email communications and reduce email overload. This book presents that methodology, MasteringEmail™—the twelve principles, the processes and then the details—without tying my work to a specific email system like Outlook, Gmail or Lotus Notes.

I developed MasteringEmail™ to help you get your job done without constant email interruption and the pressure of an overflowing inbox. I also expect it to improve your work/life balance, reduce your stress and help you recoup time you should be spending with friends and family.

Thanks for coming along.

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to those who helped me prove that my quest was worthwhile, responded to my surveys and helped me zero in on the book title and subtitle.

I deeply appreciate the advice, input and challenges I received from Stu Halasz and Robert Curwin. Robert and Stu made great suggestions for my early work.

Thank you to Terry Frediani, Mimi Urgovitch and Tina Hennessey. You read my early manuscripts and got me underway.

Heartfelt thanks to Ann McHale for reorganizing the material and providing the first real edit. Nice job, Ann; thank you for your love, time, and effort.

Ashlee Hall, Rodrigo Brinski, Scott Hendrickson and Fred Livezey helped me develop my marketing tools and social network—what a job that was!

David Morgan, a real professional in creative arts, critiqued the book covers and provided significant refinements.

And, in the end game, Marguerite Del Giudice took control and did a marvelous job turning my work into a real book. Heartfelt thanks, Marguerite.

I depended on my wife, Carol, for counsel, support and motivation to complete this project. Thank you, Carol; you have always been there for me.

Introduction

As nearly every one of us has a computer on our desk at home and at work, email enables us to communicate next door or around the globe in seconds. On a personal basis, we can share with others, receive and search for information and stay connected with friends and relatives. Email is quick and easy. There is no paper and there are no stamps. We don’t have to run to the post office and we have immediate delivery. Some people believe email and overnight delivery services will put the United States Postal Service out of business.

On October 8, 2011, Martin Bryant, European editor of The Next Web, wrote an article stating that the first email message was sent in October of 1971. He also noted how email was really embraced twenty years later when the World Wide Web went public.

Email is a great communication tool; however, it raises significant challenges. For many knowledge workers, managers and busy people, email has become a distraction and a burden that raises anxiety and steals personal time. As a consultant and executive coach, I’m always hearing complaints about email overload—hundreds of emails in the inbox, some there for over a year. In one recent case, over four years; wow.

The headline article in the money section of USA Today on May 18, 2011, was entitled Distractions for Workers Add Up: Technology Can Actually Reduce Productivity. According to the survey of 515 white-collar workers by Harmon.ie, a social software provider, distractions caused by social media, email and badly designed office technology may cost a company with 1,000 workers ten million dollars a year. The study concluded that more than half the workers wasted an hour or more per day on interruptions, with 60 percent of the distraction due to electronic devices and email.

When we started working together, one client had 1,200 emails in his inbox and assured me he needed every one. We started a dialogue about what needed to be there and why. He began to agree it would be better to file or process the email as soon as possible rather than leave it for later. In 30 days, he was down to 500 emails, determined to see that inbox empty. Another client started with 600 emails in her inbox;