Too much information...please stop!

Keeping up with the influx of information to my inbox may be getting to the point of being overwhelming I’m sure many of you would agree. Just yesterday I decided I’d figure out how many valid e-mails make it to my inbox….. for 03.09.2005 I had 643 “ valid” pieces of mail. I only sent 18 (probably a slow day for me…I probably average sending about 30 mails a day).

Wow…brings the old “drinking from a fire hose” expression to mind!

This relates nicely to a recent post by the scobleizer that discusses MyLifeBits. (I took the time to watch the Channel9 video since I’ve never been to our Bay Area office….cool stuff). Tools like this are becoming more and more necessary. Coupling my 5 bizillion e-mails a day with my 4GB of digital pictures from my trip last week I’m quickly getting lost in the information age! Most of my digital information comes in from my aggregator, digital camera, and e-mails from discussion lists.

How are the rest of you doing it? Am I getting more e-mails than most people, am I caring too much? Should I be less “ivolved?” I’ve heard of folks permanently setting OOF messages or others just deleting everything in their inbox after a certain time period, etc., etc.

What is YOUR take on keeping up with all of it?

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2005
  Filters... Outlook rules are very easy to create, and work very effectively to help me keep track of all the different people that send me email.
  
  It makes life easier when we use a pre-defined setup to keep track of Images, Music, and Emails, and Documents. Everything should have a place.
  
  That's my take on it.
  
  
• Anonymous
  March 16, 2005
  Well, I did my part to help by refraining from posting feedback. In fact I successfully refrained from posting for almost a whole week. Now trying to see if I can last another week. If I succeed, I'll let you know.