One of the things that's a real chore when you get back from a trip is catching up with email. I got back late last night from a 3-day trip to the UK and encountered 248 emails when I turned on my PC this morning.
And that total excludes the spam stuff my spam catcher, Cloudmark SafetyBar, intercepts.
Yes, I'd logged in to my Gmail account a couple of times while away, but I'd not been able to check email on my primary domain, which is where most email gets to.
Back at base, I no longer do what I used to do when returning from a trip - look at all the email subject lines, spend a little time on the ones that definitely need immediate attention, and just ignore the rest.
It's always struck me as the height of total non-productivity that you think you have to spend hours and hours dealing with all email when you get back to the office. My philosophy has been to just deal with the stuff you have to. If you haven't replied to other email, well, the sender will follow up on it when he or doesn't hear from you. Right?
Well, not really from a social behaviour point of view. As an email piler not a filer, I'm still mindful of Jason Clarke's admonishment on dealing with email:
You respond to your voicemail in a timely fashion, don’t you? If you can’t be bothered to adhere to a system that ensures you respond to the email you receive, you’re being rude.
That was a pretty powerful post, Jason! So I now do try and get to every email. It does take a bit of time, though.
One thing I'm currently looking at is a new service from Vodafone that launched in The Netherlands a few months ago - Vodafone Blackberry WebClient. You get a brand new Blackberry 7100v as part of the deal. While I don't see how it would help me address all the email volume, at least I'd have a very cool gadget and can strike the right pose sitting in a Starbucks or wherever discreetly doing email.
Of course, what I should be doing right now is more of my email, instead of writing this post. Ah, but, you see, such things are an integral element of yak shaving...
I've been hitting my head on the same email overload problem. I checked out the Vodafone 7100v but decided against for two reasons: (a) the keypad layout is pretty unique, as it's a qwery format overlaid on a regular numeric keypad - I felt it would be a real headache to get to grips with; and (b) sometimes I want to shut off my mails and only receive calls, e.g. weekends (helps keep a marriage together, right?), making a combined phone/mail unit less attractive. Soooo, I ended up going for a good old 7200 (full keyboard, so much quicker to use) and a separate phone. Thanks to some smart negotiating from o2 (UK vodafone rival), I got both for the same monthly cost as a single 7100v with Vodafone.
Posted by: Marc Cornelius | 02 April 2005 at 10:40
Good points, Marc, especially re shutting off email and only having the phone when you want. That was in my mind, too - do I really want to be getting emails the whole time? No, I don't.
I know quite a few folk here who have Blackberries. Useful tools indeed. Yet watching how they interact with them, use them, makes me think I'll stick with what I have for now.
What I *really* want still isn't here yet:
http://www.nevon.net/nevon/2005/02/a_mobile_device.html
Posted by: Neville Hobson | 04 April 2005 at 15:21