An article in the New York Times that reiterates some of the points that I have made in this blog can be found here:An Empty In-box or With Just a Few Email Messages.The writer shares the practices he uses to work his email down to zero, but unfortunately doesn’t address the fact that his set of habits can’t be picked up and used by many people, simply because they are product of his own idiosyncracies. Not that this is wrong – it’s just that people who want to achieve a Zero Inbox generally need more than a list of one person’s habits in order to achieve the goal. In other words, they need to craft a set of practices that work for them, and them alone, and perhaps more importantly, a way to change their own habits reliably.Most people, however, are convinced that they need to just get less email, and that somehow throttling communication in some way is the right approach.The fact is that spam filters and email rules do help for a while, but they don’t resolve the underlying problem that created trouble in the first place — personal habits that were never intended to handle the number of emails being received.Ultimately, only a smart change in habits will produce the desired end-result.
Applied Research in a World of Increasing Time Demands