Jon - a great article! I too, like many here, am overwhelmed by email and am constantly struggling to find a way to properly cope with it. My own methods include:
- Only have Outlook 2007 set up on my main workstation and laptop
- Outlook 2007 is configured with all of my work email accounts, and my personal email account
- Windows Live Mail (the desktop client) is configured on all of my PCs for my personal email
- On the weekends, I rarely if ever open up Outlook - weekends are my time away from my job (sort of...anyone that knows these sites will see me mucking about on the weekends)
- I check my personal email quite a bit during the day/night/weekends, but the volume is so low, it's "fun" for me. :-)
- On my smartphone, I have push turned off. I have it set to check and sync every four hours. That's mostly because during the day, 90% of the time I'm at my desk with Outlook open
- I find that if I need to get some writing some (reviews, columns, etc.) I switch to my laptop and leave Outlook closed, or move to another PC that doesn't have Outlook installed - that allows me to switch "modes" in terms of my focus.
- I sometimes wonder if I have ADD. I really hate how our Western culture is so prone to slap a syndrome on every human behaviour, and medicate it all, but I really do have some focusing problems and I can relate to what Brad said about it taking 45 minutes to get "re-focused"
My real problem? RSS management! Now THERE'S a nightmare. I'm constantly scared to open Feedemon if it's been more than couple of days...