Email bankruptcy is somewhat of a trend. At the end of 2007, the New York Times included “email bankruptcy” in a list of new words that became a part of the national conversation during the year.
The term may have first been coined in 1999 by an MIT professor Sherry Turkle who studies the relationship between people and technology. It became popularized a few years later when Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig filed his own high-profile high-tech bankruptcy. Other notable email bankruptcies have since made the news, including that of venture capitalist Fred Wilson.
Email Overload
Radicati says there is no guarantee that users actually read the messages that are the most important, and that if email traffic continues at this rate, the average corporate worker will spend 41 percent of the workday managing email in 2009.
This made me mull over my own system for dealing with email, which admittedly, is no system at all. As a writer, the only relief I find from email interruptions is to shut down my email program altogether while on deadline. Because when my email is on, messages pop up like instant messenger in the bottom right hand of my screen, making them impossible to ignore. My own overcrowded inbox needed some discipline.
Create Your Own System
I leaned on our systems and network administrator (this would be the equivalent of a financial advisor if I were trying to avoid real-life bankruptcy) to find out what I could do to keep the email problem under control. After our talk and considering the nature of my job, I decided to set aside ten minutes every two hours to answer emails. Once I answered ten minutes worth of email, I could turn off my email and get back to writing.
Don’t “Reply to All”
I chuckled my way through hilarious emails in the 90s, but now I try to know better. Instead of replying to all (which can lead to a long line of unnecessary communication), I try to get straight to the point (if there is one) and go to the person who can do something about it (if something needs to be done). Of course, this is challenging when an email is too hysterical to keep to myself, but I try to keep sending out my own humor to Fridays only. (To keep the bankruptcy metaphor going, this is like eating lunch out only one day per week to keep spending under control.)
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