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If you get lots of emails, then you won't always have time to follow up on all of them. Somtimes the mere task of comprehending the email to create todos from i

by cturner 15y ago

If you get lots of emails, then you won't always have time to follow up on all of them. Somtimes the mere task of comprehending the email to create todos from it takes energy, and you don't always have energy to do that immediately. So the emails queue. Effectively the emails become tasks. After several weeks of high load you find your inbox is crammed with lots of things you mean to get around to but you're exhausted. This is a common problem for busy people and has no obvious solution. One way we try to tackle hard problems is by identifying them, and then having open discussion. > or use a simple Wiki to simulate an issue tracker. > For my personal purposes, a plain text file works > flawlessly. The mechanisms you're talking about don't scale to situations where you're being hit by a firehose of emails and calls, but where you have to have concentration periods as well. e.g. technical role that's customer-facing. My current solution is multi-layered, and starts with a text file. But it's not the simple problem that you make it out to be.

fluorid 15y ago
The common problem you describe is still not about email. The real cause lies in people with deficits in time management, organisational skills and leadership. If you have too many projects/threads going on with too many people time to change: do fewer projects, focus, delegate, give people goals rather than nitty-gritty todos, basically stop micro-managing, find talented peers and trust them.
- cturner 15y ago
  There are mechanisms through which some limitations of email can be worked around, but there are still problems with email. Technologies lend themselves to particular use and misuse, and when we see a repeating patterns of abuse, it's reasonable to focus on the technology and talk about what we can do differently. The original post is talking about email as a series of protocols and ignoring the culture of email as we use it in day-to-day use. It's a nerdy rant that dismisses a problem space by forcing a new definition on the language, rather than addressing the problems that people suffer. The chap I relied to continues the tone by insulting people who are dealing with the queue. Email is the monitoring messages that clog up my inbox. It's the reasonable expectation of response that happens when somebody sends me an email, unlike with my phone where I leave voicemail turned off or a colleague can take a call and I can know that ownership has shifted. Email is the ease with which a difficult-to-understand message is sent and the exhaustion created by comprehending it. It's the poor integration with task management. It's the awkwardness around tracking ownership of an issue that's sent to a group list. It's spam. It's the compromises you make to avoid spam. It's how awkward it is to implement IMAP, and the multiple eccentricities of different IMAP servers, and how woeful POP is. It's Lotus Notes and Exchange, and being forced to use them.
  - nkassis 15y ago
    I think people are looking at it the wrong way, it's not problems with email it's the fact that email is flexible, decentralized, reliable that makes it possible to use it for any of these tasks. The asynchronous messaging that email provides is it's killer feature that would need to exist for any of the features (todo,task management,calendering...) that you mention would need to work well. But the underlying mechanism of email is still working fine and I don't think that should change. I agree with the article, the client is where this should go with maybe some thing similar to the W3C and Browser vendors (This isn't perfect but it works) agreeing to protocols.
- vog 15y ago
  > find talented peers and trust them. This is the most important advice, I think. Although delegating, etc. is very important, too.

by cturner 15y ago

fluorid 15y ago

The common problem you describe is still not about email. The real cause lies in people with deficits in time management, organisational skills and leadership. If you have too many projects/threads going on with too many people time to change: do fewer projects, focus, delegate, give people goals rather than nitty-gritty todos, basically stop micro-managing, find talented peers and trust them.

cturner 15y ago
There are mechanisms through which some limitations of email can be worked around, but there are still problems with email. Technologies lend themselves to particular use and misuse, and when we see a repeating patterns of abuse, it's reasonable to focus on the technology and talk about what we can do differently. The original post is talking about email as a series of protocols and ignoring the culture of email as we use it in day-to-day use. It's a nerdy rant that dismisses a problem space by forcing a new definition on the language, rather than addressing the problems that people suffer. The chap I relied to continues the tone by insulting people who are dealing with the queue. Email is the monitoring messages that clog up my inbox. It's the reasonable expectation of response that happens when somebody sends me an email, unlike with my phone where I leave voicemail turned off or a colleague can take a call and I can know that ownership has shifted. Email is the ease with which a difficult-to-understand message is sent and the exhaustion created by comprehending it. It's the poor integration with task management. It's the awkwardness around tracking ownership of an issue that's sent to a group list. It's spam. It's the compromises you make to avoid spam. It's how awkward it is to implement IMAP, and the multiple eccentricities of different IMAP servers, and how woeful POP is. It's Lotus Notes and Exchange, and being forced to use them.
- nkassis 15y ago
  I think people are looking at it the wrong way, it's not problems with email it's the fact that email is flexible, decentralized, reliable that makes it possible to use it for any of these tasks. The asynchronous messaging that email provides is it's killer feature that would need to exist for any of the features (todo,task management,calendering...) that you mention would need to work well. But the underlying mechanism of email is still working fine and I don't think that should change. I agree with the article, the client is where this should go with maybe some thing similar to the W3C and Browser vendors (This isn't perfect but it works) agreeing to protocols.
vog 15y ago
> find talented peers and trust them. This is the most important advice, I think. Although delegating, etc. is very important, too.