QoWL Top Tips: how to Reduce Email Overload

One of the small pleasures of office life is to be able to show off about the number of emails you have received whilst you are away – “…away for a week and I had 200 emails waiting for me when I got back!”. However, sometimes the drip-drip-drip of emails in your inbox can be cause for concern, stress or even downright panic.

Increasingly organisations assessing the quality of working life, well-being or stress of their staff are concerned about ‘email overload’. Research evidence and our experience of supporting staff have shown that there are some general strategies that can be effective when people are trying to cope with the demands of too many emails. Putting these together we have come up with (as tradition dictates) 10 top tips for improving your quality of working life by reducing email overload.

1. Get a good junk mail filter
A large percentage of emails dropping in your inbox will be junk – offers from an African General to transfer a million dollars into your account, your bank asking you for your account details & password as they have forgotten them, or even offers for cheap blue tablets to improve your performance. Although this type of email is easily deleted and discarded, if you have too many it can just add to the feeling of being overwhelmed. Get a good junk mail filter – and learn how to use the software so you can ignore emails from persistent offenders.

2. Cancel your email subscriptions
You might not notice them anymore because you delete them straight away, but all those emails from sign-up & subscription services and organisations who send you periodic newsletters all add up. Pause a little the next time they turn up to think if you ever read them, and if not, cancel them.

3. Think before *you* send an email
Of course most of your emails should be top priority for their recipients, but how many times do you send emails ‘just in case they might like to know’ or where you just send people a short or irrelevant reply to be polite: ‘OK’, ‘Thanks’. Sometimes a 'No reply required' note at the end of your email can do wonders to reduce 'politeness overload' messages, especially if you have to send out general information emails to many people.

4. Don’t ‘copy’ you emails to everyone
It is tempting to give everyone a blow-by-blow account of your dealings with important or sensitive people, but not everyone will want to know and it is likely you will just add to *their* sense of email overload.

5. Only send Urgent emails when it really is urgent
We all probably know some people who send ‘red’ emails just to tell you they have entered the building. Not only does indiscriminate use of high priority emails cause a sense of overload, but can also lead to people ignoring really important messages.

6. Rude or ‘flaming’ emails
Research has shown we are more likely to come over as rude or abrupt on email compared to the telephone or face-to-face. If you are trying to deal with a sensitive topic be brave and go and see them or even pick up the phone rather than letting things escalate over email. Reading such messages in the cold light of day rarely makes anyone look reasonable.

7. Check your emails *less* often
Now, you can’t always do this and it may be counterintuitive to some extent, but looking at your emails less often (even if your email looking takes longer as you need to deal with more of them) is much less stressful than looking at your emails very often. The worst possible thing you can do for your sense of email overload and interruptions to your other work is to have an alarm set up where you get notified every time a new email comes on your system (or if you do need this, reserve it for 'red’ emails only).

8. Keep you inbox small (or large)
Trying to deal with all of your emails as they come in rather than letting them sit there looking at you can be an effective way to deal with email overload. However many emails, especially work-related need to be thought about and so cannot be dealt with straight away. A possibly counter-intuitive alternative that works for some people is to not empty your inbox at all (except for junk mail) and deal with the important ones as they come in. This helps reduce the sense of urgency, and if you forget to answer an email you can easily find it again.

9. More talk less email
You sit there fingers poised over keyboard, trying to put your thoughts in order, knowing it’s going to be a complicated one. STOP! Pick up the phone, go along to their office & talk it through. Not only should it save you time in the long run, but the interactivity means you should get any problems sorted out more thoroughly, and it generally improves everyone's quality of working life to have a chat. If you really need an email record of what you’ve just agreed, you or they can send an email summary, with ‘No reply required’ at the end of your message.

10. The view from Microsoft
If you use Outlook, have a look at Microsoft’s approach to dealing with email overload, including setting priorities and organising emails: http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC100647451033

So, after your next week off, you will be the envy of the staff coffee room, being able to say, “I followed the QoWL email overload top tips, I was away for a week and I only have 100 emails waiting for me when I got back!”. Well... every little helps.


Selected Research Articles

Hogan, B. & Fisher, D. (2006). A scale for measuring email overload

Analysis of Data following Microsoft Email Overload Scale

Dabbish, L.A. & Kraut, R. E. (2006). Email Overload at Work

Flaming emails