Get smart with email
Harold asks: do we suffer from information overload or do we have the wrong tools? Clearly, email is inefficient. It is like cars: everybody gets stuck in traffic.
To cope, I answer and compose emails only once a day, on a schedule (after 4pm). I check and prune my email regularly however.
How do you cope with email?
See also Improving your intellectual productivity by accepting chaos and How to manage email (Inbox Zero).
Montreal, Canada 
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Information Overload is not a new “concept” it has been experienced by people through history. One should always keep in mind that through history people have always complained about “information overload”
Comment by A — 1/1/2008 @ 11:04
To cope with email, I use the most powerful tool known to Man: denial. Seriously, how else could I be “following” the Inbox Zero approach, have 87 email in my @Action folder, 194 emails in my @Read-Review folder, and have 246 emails in my inbox, yet still sleep at night, albeit fitfully?
I’m not sure that this is a tool issue. For example, just because you might like to build a beautiful armoire that you saw on the New Yankee Workshop doesn’t mean that there’s a tool out there that will magically do it for you. If you don’t have any free time to build it, it’s just not going to get done.
Comment by Michael Stiber — 1/1/2008 @ 12:58
I automatically filter them to death so very few actually end up on my inbox for instant review. The rest ends up on specific folders where I review when possible.
Comment by Ricardo Niederberger Cabral — 2/1/2008 @ 14:01