Email Overload!

[CaptainSlow]

In my last couple of roles I seem to have become a slave to my inbox and may have lost touch on reality on what is normal. How many emails that require reading is normal these days?

[randlemarcus]

Piece of string. If not doing a delivery , i would expect 10/20 actionable a day from 50 (big company, and we like sending rubbish out). Currently have 150 actionable and it is killing me

[Frimley111R]

Avoid them for the first hour or two of the day. If they are really important people wont use email

[sgrimshaw]

There are plenty of sites with advice on dealing with email overload.

I found some useful suggestions on this one in particular:

http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/how-to-avoid-ema...

[ShortShift811]

randlemarcus said:

Piece of string. If not doing a delivery , i would expect 10/20 actionable a day from 50 (big company, and we like sending rubbish out).

Similar to mine.

I find only opening Outlook 3 times a day works well: first thing at 7:30, then around 11:30 and lastly at about 16:00. For anything genuinely urgent someone will usually call me.

[nick s]

I receive anywhere from 100-150 per day, and action about 60-80.

[Bikerjon]

Depends on the company culture. Some still like to send huge amount of emails about meeting room availability, leftover food in the fridge, car parking etc. They can normally be skimmed in seconds.

For real emails requiring a response then try not to write more than 3 sentences. Most emails should be fairly short - not quite twitter, but not paragraphs of text either!

[L555BAT]

I think the "check email x times per day" tip can be good for individual productivity but if too many people do it then the overall productivity drops due to people blocked from getting on with things while awaiting replies.

Filters are your friend. I filter everything usual/expected into different folders, each of which I'll check at appropriate intervals. Automated notifications, PR/company announcements and newsletters, colleague spam for after work drinks/football. Turn off the desktop notifications for the ones that don't need your immediate attention.

Also on a non-technical level, a culture of not cc-ing everyone on everything helps. Many people cc everyone on everything to cover their arses, so if anything goes wrong later they can say "well you were all cc'd on that months ago".