I now get such a vast amount of email, its turned into a problem that is very nearly (tho not quite!) unmanageable. At least for me- maybe you are all cool, calm and efficient in the management of this onslaught! Then there is the expectation people have that you will respond to emails quickly. Apologies re the length of this message. You don’t need to read it all to get the gist- you can stop here and just email the list with any clever ideas for managing email!
How do the rest of you get on? Do you have any tips? Apologies for asking something so basic, which we should actually be able to teach to our users! . And maybe there is nothing new to say. But just in case..
What I am trying (tho need to put more time and discipline into organising)
· Being ruthless in general
· ID and delete spam very rapidly. We have a spam filter, but not all get caught. I may miss actual messages that way, but no disasters so far! I have had important messages that got stuck in the email filter (we see a list), so I need to check that regularly
· ID and delete nearly as quickly anything not immediately apparent as relevant (higher risk, definitely)
· Get off all the most key current awareness emails (tho sometimes it would take more time than just deleting them, when it would take a while to track down how to unsubscribe.)
· Using colours, so the emails from users that are top priority and may be urgent come in fuschia (!) But that needs an open in-box, and it has a limit to how many people you can mark in one colour.
Other things I have heard of
· Has anyone managed to avoid going straight to their email first thing? I’m wondering about doing a proper to-do list first, so I have a proper overview of priorities before email gazumps the time (often for less important things)
· Or having the email closed, apart from set times? I would like to do that, and tell people to phone if its urgent, but they don’t tend to. At the same time, they also expect a quick response. I have fallen foul of that when I am classifying or doing something else where I don’t have constant sight of my email. There is the option of a beep or visual alert for a new email, but that could interrupt me too much (given the quantity)
· I know someone who automatically deletes all email received between 6pm Fri and 9am Monday??
Lis-medical was adding to the avalanche, so I have switched to the option of getting daily digests instead. I was sad to do that switch, as Lis-medical is such a key network for us. I did it as I just get overwhelmed with email. And there was the problem that some of the messages were very relevant, but most were not (as I work outside the NHS/academic sectors, and am not in a large library that could help with article requests). But switching has had the usual problems which know about with our users- reactive works better than proactive- as long as there is a manageable amount!!
I lapse with reading the digests as you don’t get the subjects without checking the content. But partly anyway.
Sometimes I go to the archives (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/lis-medical.html ), which works fine- but I need to schedule doing that. And sometimes I miss something with a short deadline.
Sigh!
(PS I will read any replies in the digest, as I’d need to remember/have resent my password and to change it again in a couple of days. But I will read the digest promptly! If you are interested in the delivery options etc, look in ‘subscribers corner’ at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?REPORT&z=3 )
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