There’s lots of techniques for managing email more efficiently, and our TechLines panel covered many of them. But it’s vital to recognise that the nature of email means there’s always going to be a limit to how much you can automate the handling process.
In this final segment of our recent TechLines broadcast, IBM Lotus GM Alistair Rennie makes the point that email by its very nature is always going to involve tasks that won’t get done more than once
Productivity gets lost in informal work processes and exception processing. Most of the things that go on email are things that don’t have repeatability.
The upside of no repeatability? No matter how annoying it is, you won’t have to do it again. That’s definitely something to bear in mind the next time you feel overwhelmed by your inbox.
If you want to see the entire TechLines show, you can watch it here, or check out the 30 minute highlight version.
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"email by its very nature is always going to involve tasks that won’t get done more than once"
Really? I get a lot of email notices that are very, very repeatable. I'm not sure the nature of my email is the same as yours.
If you're getting near identical email but haven't automated your processing of them, I'm not convinced that's my fault :)
The email notices are automated to tell me that things need doing. If I could automate the "doing" part I would have ;)