Personal coping strategies I
posted by Nathan Zeldes on June 26, 2007
It is interesting how people cope with Email Overload. We are a resilient species, and as pressures evolve, we evolve coping strategies, which vary from person to person. Over time you are bound to sight such strategies, reflected in the messages in your Inbox, or shared in conversations with people. Some are but small steps, but some are quite radical, or innovative, or both.
So I thought I’d share some of my sightings here on occasion, because they may be good for you, or may inspire you to thinking of something similar or better that might make your life easier.
As a first example, I met a senior researcher at Intel who does not log into email at all on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to allow himself time for focused thinking work. He says people are shocked when they hear that he does this, amazed that he can stand being “disconnected” (note how they aren’t saying that he’s likely to fail to do his job; they’re amazed that he can take the psychological impact of kicking the habit!)
For the record, this guy is quite successful at what he does.
Feel free to post comments here on your own experiences and strategies!
Comments (2)
tagged: distractions, email, infoglut, infomania, information overload, interruptions
Comments
Jun 28 | Eleanor said:
Hello Nathan, it’s me again. Your specialist on technical terminology from the philosophical and social side of the house. So, am I “coping” with an “overload” of air in the atmosphere by just breathing as much as I need? (and not breathing deeply when it smells toxic?)Because I walk into a liquor store and read some labels, does that make me an alcoholic? I am so concerned about this infomania business that I have been in touch with an experimental neuroscientist, but I will talk about him on my next post. It appears there is some research on this topic of cognitive responses and distractions and it is conditional on the task! Let’s not assume everyone feels overloaded by their e-mail, even though some do. Some people are quicker to detect relevance vs. irrelevance,(to the activity of the moment). Some people like conversation more than others. Some people need to know what others are interested in before proceeding with one thing or another. And some tasks are so compelling that it is very hard to distract people from them. It would be good to have at least a figure of what constitutes “too much mail” and to whom, before we even make the assertion that overload is universal and assumed to exist as an independent variable.
Jul 01 | Nathan Zeldes said:
Hey Eleanor, don’t worry!
Actually we are in perfect agreement. I say that a great many people suffer from Email Overload; this is supported by reams of data, which so far no one refutes. You say that some people don’t suffer from it. Since these two statements are fully compatible, where is the problem? And yes, for those many people who do suffer, “cope” (“manage in spite of difficulty; struggle successfully”) is definitely the correct English term, and I am committed to try and help them do it. The others (lucky they) are obviously not my target audience.
Email Overload is universal in the sense that it affects some (many) people in all countries and most job types; the term does not imply that every single human being is affected.