Email becoming counterproductive leading to information overload

Office workers are being overwhelmed by a deluge of unwanted data and are largely becoming less effective as a result of their companies' email practices says research.

In a poll of 1,000 workers conducted by market researcher OnePoll, 70 per cent of employees complained about being sent irrelevant emails or being copied on emails of no interest.

More than a third (38 per cent) of respondents said they now suffer from information overload at work.

Office workers now face the choice of trawling through countless irrelevant emails or ignoring them and potentially missing out on vital messages.

Tim Barker, vice president of EMEA strategy for CRM solutions company Salesforce says: ‘The habit of “blasting out” emails to a large group of people to ensure that there is no chance of leaving anyone out of a message has created a situation where email is now becoming counterproductive.’

BECOME A FILTER NINJA

Outlook and other email software lets you set up filters that show you only the messages that meet your selected criteria.

When you filter your emails by contact or by those which are direct to you the ones which are likely to deserve a faster reply too can be brought to your attention. Filters can be as customised as you like depending on the content or contact of most interest or relevance to you.

REDUCE YOUR CARBON COPY FOOTPRINT

Many of us use the cc line too liberally, copying everyone in our organization who has recently expressed an opinion on the subject we're writing about.

While there are legitimate reasons for using the cc line to keep people in the loop, abuse of the electronic "carbon copy" is a big factor behind inbox bloat.

You can dissuade persistent offenders by politely explaining to them what you need to know. But good etiquette is always best taught through example. Cut down on the cc'ing and trust that others will follow your lead.

GRAB A TECHNICAL ASSIST

Filters are okay, but my email software really ought to be able to do the hard work for me. After all, it has all the information it needs to figure out who are my most important contacts based on the frequency with which we exchange email.

That's the theory behind Gmail Priority Inbox, a feature Google introduced on August 30. This optional way of organizing your Gmail puts your important messages at the top of your inbox.

Original Sources: Computerworld.com, Salesforce.com and Smallbusiness.co.uk, Reuters.com

Take a Break!

We are all striving to be more productive and the get as much done as we can within the given work day. For many this means not taking a break which actually is proven to hamper productivity.

The standard working week of 40hours is constantly being extended as people push themselves to meet expectations, targets and ensure that they maintain their jobs. The "work until you drop" culture is not only unproductive but it could also be detrimental to our health. People who work longer hours are more prone to illness and injury which in the long term benefits no one.

Industrial companies put a lot of effort in to "asset integrity" - which really just means protecting critical plants and machinery from damage and wear and tear.

Within the service industries should companies not be doing the same where their people are their only assets?

Conflictingly financial services, consulting, the law and even the medical profession perpetuate working hours where all-nighters are heroic, driving with jet lag is the norm and anyone who actually has lunch risks becoming lunch.

For the last 100 years every productivity study in every industry has come to the same conclusion: after about 40 hours in a week, the quality of your work starts to degrade. You make mistakes. That’s why working 60 hours may not save you time or money: you’ll spend too much of that time fixing the mistakes you shouldn’t have made in the meantime. That’s why software companies that limit work to 35 hours a week need to employ fewer QA engineers: there isn’t as much mess to clean up.

With regard to multi tasking, when the cognitive scientist Dan Simons looked at the vast mountain of evidence that demonstrates the futility of it, he was inevitably asked whether there were anything we could do to enlarge the capacity of our minds to which the answer was an emphatic no.

Simons said that the one thing that truly enhances cognition is exercise.
Experiments by his colleague Arthur Kramer showed that walking for a few hours a week led to large improvements on cognitive tasks. Stretching and toning exercises had no cognitive benefits, but aerobic exercise, which increases blood flow to the brain, did. Seniors who walked for just 45 minutes a day for three days a week showed better preservation of their brains in MRI scans. Exercise, Simons concludes, improves cognition broadly by increasing the fitness of your brain.

Instead of setting unrealistic demands upon yourself or expectations for others you should take a break! Step away from the desk at the very least over your lunch break and if your the boss encourage it and lead by example. After all it's called a lunch "break" for a reason!