On Message with Ben Gross

Email overload is hardly a new issue — CNN carried a story about it back in 1998 that could have been written today. Though there are far more people feeling pain of overload now, there has been surprisingly little progress towards any sort of cure.

Over the years, there have been a number of solutions suggested, e.g. the Harvard Business School’s set of recommendations for personal mail management, Kaitlin Duck Sherwood’s Overcomeemailoverload.com site, and even consultancies dedicated to the problem.

There have also been a number of products built for Outlook users, such as the Nelson Email Organizer (NEO), ClearContext, and You Perform’s suite of tools.

Earlier this week Claritude Software launched SpeedFiler, a lightweight, inexpensive ($19.95) Outlook plug in, that promises to help users categorize their mail. Claritude’s approach is based partly on David Allen’s Getting Things Done, which is something of a religion for its adherents. A free 30 day trial version is available on the site.

The appeal of these technical solutions is undeniable, and improved personal management strategies can help. But as long as it only takes one minute for a sender to request (or demand) many hours of a recipient’s time, email overload will remain a common affliction. The real problem is social, and the emerging solution seems to be a granting of tacit permission to ignore incoming mail, at least some of the time.

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