Offline the new Online?

The middle of last week I went away to New York with a few friends for a four days and as such my mailbox didn't get the attention it normally does.  I must admit that I did still sync me email in the morning while recovering (if you want a list of good bars in New York let me know) but this wasn't in order to reply to an emails .... just to delete the ones that were FMI (For My Information).

This is all well and good but when I came into work on Tuesday,  I was met by a considerable pile of email to the tune of around 290 emails (its worth noting at this point that I am not a member of any distribution groups so all of these had my name in the email directly) which needed to be processed while dealing with new emails and IM that were coming in during the day.  How can one fix this problem you might ask yourself ?

Last Thursday I was at a location with no internet connection which has oddly enough enabled me to get on with a lot of work.  Without all the emails and IMs coming in for the last 8 hours,  I managed to sort out my mailbox to a more manageable 91 unread emails (its below me 100 email target - yah!),  only checking my phone for emails once an hour to see if anything new and important has come in.  As you can see in the image,  I had 32 emails sitting in my outbox ready to go when I got home.

So is offline the new online?  I certainly is for the odd day where you return from holiday and need to catch up on email.  I am seriously considering putting an 'Offiline Day' in my calendar once a month so people know I am working on the emails they sent 30 days ago but have not replied to yet :-)

Why don't you give it a try and let me know how you get on!?

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Mate you need PIFEM to manage your email ;) http://blogs.technet.com/jkruse/archive/2008/02/01/pifem-a-closer-look.aspx

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  I think that's why DL's are a bad way of managing communities... for example like you, people end up removing themselves from DLs because even their own (direct) email becomes just another burden. At MS it is probably a lot worse than what "normal" people are used to, but you are at the forefront of trends to come. There is a lot of bad use of email out there, and a lot of overuse... social software is the path to email emancipation man ;-)