“These days, it seems everyone has an opinion about how to deal with information overload, especially when it comes to email management. There are numerous methodologies, best practices, tips, and tutorials available, but are any of them really effective? Well explore that question as we delve into the top five email management methodologies.”

“Another way to look at it is this: I can classify all incoming personal email into three broad categories: (a) messages that are either very important or very interesting; (b) messages that are utterly non-interesting; and (c) those which fall somewhere in-between.

The vast majority of my email falls into the latter category. Under my previous ’system’, I let them pile up in my inboxes, under the assumption that some day I’d get around to answering many of them. Under the new system, if I don’t respond immediately after reading them, they go right into my archive. Out of sight, out of mind.

I don’t consider what I’ve done to be a declaration of email bankruptcy on those old messages that had been in my Mailsmith inboxes. Rather, in one fell swoop I’ve done with all those messages what I should have been doing to them all along: archive them.”

“‘Email bankruptcy’ was a term I first heard in the context of Lawrence Lessig deciding to throw in the towel by telling everyone to whom he owed email that he was starting over (and that important stuff should be sent again).”

“One of the benefits of using a dedicated email application like Apple Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird is the ability to send emails which included rich HTML signatures. These email signatures are easily recognizeable and often include hyperlinks, images, or a combination of the two. Although Gmail users could easily access their accounts via POP allowing for HTML emails, web-based users are were forced to use plain text signatures. For quite some time, I yearned for the ability to add a little more personality to my emails. Unfortunately, because I managed all my email accounts via Gmail’s web interface, the option was non-existent. That was until I discovered the Better Gmail Firefox extension.”

“The message of Mark Hurst’s new book, Bit Literacy: In an age of infinite bits, time and attention are the scarce resources. The solution is to constantly manage your bits with the goal of reaching an ‘empty’ state. Hurst offers practical, opinionated advice on how to get to zero. Just like in his Uncle Mark’s shopping guides, he doesn’t shy away from taking a stand. It’s nice to read someone who says “do it this way” instead of being wishy-washy.”

“Knowledge workers attend lots of meetings. We also have tons of loose bits of information that need collecting during the day. It all needs to be processed. To jog our memory, we take notes. Most of the time this is with pen and paper - unless your culture is laptop/Tablet PC friendly. Many aren’t. I use David Allen’s GTD system and now buckle it into Gmail as my sole collection bucket.”

“If your email volume is anything like mine, it’s totally insane. Thousands of messages constantly streaming in and, only a tiny fraction of those are messages you need to see. Surprising then, that only a few years ago I was literally living inside Microsoft Outlook. Rigid folders, the nightmarish rules ‘wizard’, and that annoying inbox chime that dings regardless of which folder your new distraction message ultimately wound up. I completely believe that Gmail saved my life. Okay, that’s pushing it. Gmail didn’t save my life. What Gmail (and a little bit of GTD-inspired respect for my own time) did was save my attention span. Some careful filtering and a bit of common sense returned a half hour or more of uninterrupted concentration per day. “

“Email is fantastic. We use it to stay in touch with friends, contact clients, and handle support requests. It’s easy to use, low cost, and less intrusive than a phone call or meeting. But with email being such an integral part of our lives, are we using it as effectively as possible? To find out, have a look at the techniques these articles recommend on ensuring that your messages are read.”

“In October 2003 the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission placed 200,000 of Enron’s internal emails from 1999-2002 into the public domain as part of its ongoing investigations. The archive offers an extraordinary window into the lives and preoccupations of Enron’s top executives during a turbulent period. Read more about Enron’s demise on Wikipedia. Trampoline engineers used this data as testbed during development of the company’s SONAR technology. The result was so fascinating we decided to open it up and allow anyone to dig in. The Enron Explorer lets you investigate the actions and reactions of Enron’s senior management team as the noose began to tighten.”

“Dealing with emails can be a nightmare, especially when you have hundreds of unread emails which keep growing by the hour, and dozens of flagged messages which need following-up on. Here are a few simple actions you can take to clear that inbox.”

“Zookoda is an email marketing application designed specifically for bloggers. Zookoda enables you to send a daily, weekly or monthly summary of your latest blog posts directly into your vistors inbox. Oh…did we mention — it’s all FREE!”

“‘Don’t work too hard,’ wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I’m probably wrong. According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.”

“Paul Allen Blog mentions stats for how likely people are to open e-mails on various days of the week, and how likely they are to click on something in them… Well, e-mail marketing isn’t generally anything to recommend nowadays, as it can a bit hard to distinguish it from spam. But say you have a legitimate reason for mailing a lot of people, like a newsletter they’ve signed up for, this is of course useful. Send it Friday or Sunday.”

“Read the whole article for the arguments of choosing to discuss things in public rather than in private… People prefer personal spaces: it feels more comfortable,�fast�and easy to ask personally, to have documents on your local drive or to search your inbox for copies of�corporate reports… Think of e-mail. E-mail is where knowledge goes to die.”

“Businesses that send marketing e-mail have huddled with their lawyers in recent weeks, trying to figure out how to comply with the nation’s first antispam law when it takes effect Thursday [1 Jan 2004]. They face an unusually tight deadline. President Bush signed the bill, known as the Can Spam Act of 2003, on Dec. 16, leaving companies with little time to study the law and tweak their e-mail marketing plans.”