I routinely use to setup filters in my email account at a large educational institution, so that 70% or more of the email never got to me. Even with this I would every Christmas delete 200 or more unread emails from my inbox. No one noticed or cared that I had and it made no difference to my productivity, infact it enhanced it. Now days I read my email twice a day and no more and use some techniques to action each email (file, respond or delete) quickly, so I rarely have more than four or five emails in my inbox (thats in total). I can't take credit for the idea about managing email and will blog some more on it later. There are a number of people in the self development and productivity areas who advocate switching off from distractions and suggest processes like the one I use. Getting my email organised and being disciplined in its use is the single most important thing I have done to become more productive. Thing is if something like email causes this much of a hit on productivity, what about tools like SMS and Twitter?
Researcher: Info overload costs economy
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
Wed Dec 26, 12:03 PM ET
NEW YORK - Think twice before you copy someone on an e-mail or hit "reply all." Such practices have made today's workers less productive, a research firm concludes.
After years of naming a product or person of the year, Basex Inc. decided to forecast "information overload" as problem of the year for 2008.
"It's too much information. It's too many interruptions. It's too much lost time," Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira declared. "It's always too much of a good thing."
Information overload isn't exactly new, but Spira said the problem has grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous response. And more information available, he said, also means more time wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or through a search engine.
Workers get disoriented every time they stop what they are doing to reply to an e-mail or answer a follow-up phone call because they didn't reply within minutes. Spira said workers can spend 10 to 20 times the length of the original interruption trying to get back on track.
He estimates that such disruptions cost the U.S. economy $650 billion in 2006.
Spira has a number of recommendations: Resist the urge to immediately follow up an e-mail with an instant message or phone call. Make sure the subject line clearly reflects the topic and urgency of an e-mail. And use "reply all" sparingly.