The Problem: E-mail Overload

There is a simple solution to e-mail overload: don’t become overloaded. This isn’t meant to be trite. Many users complain about facing too many e-mails but never engage the obvious conclusion. If overload is the problem, then removing the load is the solution.

E-mail load is usually measured, inaccurately, in terms of message volume. Whenever people complain that they get 50 or 100 messages a day, they’re talking about their volume — the number of daily incoming messages. But volume isn’t an appropriate measurement of load, since it says nothing about how many other messages are still awaiting the user’s attention.

The correct way to measure e-mail load is by the message count, or the number of e-mails currently sitting in the inbox. While message volume shows how much more e-mail users have to manage than yesterday, message count shows the total number of e-mails that are currently loading the user. A user who gets 100 messages a day may not be overloaded at all, if their message count is low; conversely, a user who gets ten e-mails a day may indeed be overloaded. Therefore, message count is the best way to measure a user’s performance in managing his or her incoming e-mail.

E-mail management comes down to the number of current distractions — that is, messages — sitting in the inbox. The user’s goal is to dispense with those distractions quickly and efficiently so that the current load — that is, message count — never becomes too much to bear.