 Although we usually work
to remedy productivity problems at a system level, addressing organizations as a unit, nothing says
we can't share some useful personal coping tips with you!
This one I invented years ago, and I (and many others) still use it:
Tip: Set up a "Five Weeks Folder" that auto-deletes its content after five weeks. Use
it as a repository for messages you’re unsure about, such as that email you want to delete,
but you’re not sure if the sender’s going to call you tomorrow and ask about it.
I believe I got the idea from an old story about some public service official long ago
who was said to place all his incoming mail into his top desk drawer; a week later he’d move it
to the second drawer, pushing that drawer’s content into the third, and so on; any mail in the bottom
drawer would go straight into the trashcan. The notion was that "if it were important, the sender
would’ve called me about it by the time it reached the floor".
The electronic implementation uses one drawer, that folder I actually name Five Weeks.
This interval was picked so that any monthly recurrent items would not disappear before the next
one came in. And it works like a charm in speeding up Inbox processing, because my principle is
"If I hesitate more than 2 seconds whether or not to delete a message, into Five Weeks it
goes". No more nagging doubt, no more remorse, no more procrastination... after all, I’ll have five
weeks to pull it back out should the need arise (and it seldom does).
This one became popular at Intel, where I introduced it in the 90's.
Tip: When you have a short message that can fit on a single line, put it in the
message's Subject line and leave the body blank. End the subject with <EOM>, for
End-of-Message. For example:
Subject: today's staff meeting delayed to 3PM <EOM>
One advantage of this: once people adopt it across a group, it is a visible and motivating
reminder that people do try to save their coworkers' time!
It happens often that an email thread veers away from its original topic.
Tip: If that happens, follow UseNet conventions and change the subject before you
reply, keeping the original with Was:, Like this:
Subject: Recommended router supplier [was: network problem]
While you're at it, do remove any recipients that are no longer relevant!
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