Although practically every organization is full of knowledge workers groaning under a deluge of email, it’s interesting to note that in many of them I run into a small minority of people who have things under control. I discover them on occasion when I explain the various solutions I can bring in, and someone says “Oh, but I already handle this by…” or “I never do that, I always…”

The things they do vary; my favorite are the rare heroes who tell me they turn off all electronic devices after work hours, but there are many variations. Basically these people have developed, on their own, Individual Coping Strategies that permit them to thrive despite the pressure of information overload. These strategies usually coincide with ones I evangelize, perhaps not surprisingly, but are self-developed from scratch by each such individual.

Now, if only they’d proliferate their methods to the entire organization! Rarely someone does, as I’ve described here, but most of these people are happy to use their methods for themselves without raising awareness to it around them. They’re staying afloat, all alone while those around them struggle in vain against the flood of messages. Their impact is felt, however, when the organization – or a senior leader in it – decides to take action; they can set an example when the time comes for a change.

If you are one of these trailblazers, do share your favorite method in the comments!

Email overload tends to go up the more senior you get; executive level managers can easily get a few hundred incoming work-related messages a day. This is so commonplace that they don’t even stop to complain about it; they either cope with the crushing stress or they delegate their Inbox processing to an assistant.

I’ve known one glaring exception, however. I knew one senior manager, a VP  of a hi-tech Fortune 500, who had a perennially near-empty inbox, and was receiving a paltry few dozen emails a day. I inquired as to how he got to this enviable state, and he was happy to share. It was quite simple, in a way: this manager simply empowered those under him to do their jobs, and insisted they NOT copy him on email they could handle without him. Rather than hoard updates and status reports he could very well do without, rather than have his people cover their behinds by copying him on everything under the sun, he kept his time and mind free and uncluttered, which allowed him to actually manage – guide, role model and mentor those below him in the organization.

Of course when I say it was simple, that is not accurate: it takes a very unusual personality to manage in this manner, and to overcome old customs and the entrenched attitudes of those around one. Only one in a hundred managers may have what it takes.

Can you be the one?

A lecture attendee reacted to my data about the scary extent of disruption caused by endlessly ringing cellphones by saying: “I keep my cellphone turned on only in case my child calls – I wish it would only ring for him!”

Now, here is a feature that is painfully needed, and obviously useful: Allow the user to specify which callers the phone will ring for, and which it will not, when you put it into a “Silent” mode. Or use “vibrate” as part of the equation: Ring for calls from an emergency-prone dependent, vibrate for close family and coworkers, let all others leave a message.

How about it, developers?

My lectures on Information Overload invariably elicit an applause, which is gratifying but leaves open the question: what is the real impact on attendees in the long term? With long-term organizational interventions, we can collect data; but a lecture is a one-time encounter!

I was therefore pleased when I gave a lecture at a venue I revisit every few weeks, and a technician who was there to support the IT stuff came to me and said he’s heard me the previous month and had taken my advice to heart. He’d taken stock of his communication habits, gotten off lists, created rules, and so on – none of it rocket science, but the effect was (he said) a major time saving each day.

I must be doing something right, then!

I was talking to a client who – like most of us – needed more hours in the day, and he complained that part of the problem was that he was required to generate long reports, and it took him hours and hours just to type them in. So I asked him, how does he type? Turns out he uses two fingers to peck at the keyboard. I asked him, why not ten? Why doesn’t he touch type?

Of course he couldn’t touch type, nor was he planning to learn to; and neither do almost all the knowledge workers I know. Which is amazing, if you stop to consider it, because if your job involves primarily one machine, and you can operate that machine faster or slower, why not learn to do it faster?

Touch typing allows you to bang out some 60 words per minute (wpm). Hunt and Peck – the common use of two fingers – gives maybe 30 wpm. So it stands to reason that any large organization would benefit by mandating touch typing classes for all employees who use computers on a daily basis. The payback would be huge, for the company and for the individual. It takes a few weeks, and then – from that day to the end of one’s career – one can be so much faster on the job, saving precious lifetime for either more output or more leisure. Why don’t they do so?

Part of the problem may be that typing is no longer a profession. In days past, there were typists: people – mostly women – adept in the use of a typewriter. They were trained and hired to type fast and accurately; in fact, some were stenographers, trained in the art of shorthand, both with pencil and with a specialized steno machine. The extreme speeds achieved by stenography were especially sought in real-time transcription as used in a court of law, allowing as they did to capture over 120 wpm. By contrast, today a lot of typing is done by people with other job names – managers, engineers, technicians… people who are judged on other skills, to the neglect of keyboard wizardry. We’d moved much of the task of typing from the secretaries to the managers and engineers, but forgot to train the latter in the basic skills of the former.

Now, stenography is almost extinct these days, and requires some pretty specialized equipment and training; I’m not suggesting you master it. But there are countless schools and software programs that teach you touch typing, and it uses the same keyboard you already have; nor do you need anyone’s permission to learn it.

Think about it…

Photo courtesy Valeriana Solaris, shared on flickr under CC license.

I’ve discussed the harmful effects of Online silence, the phenomenon where you send email and no reply arrives for days. Since this phenomenon persists, driven by the endless flood of incoming messages, here are some tactics to apply when you run into it.

1. Be proactive. Write your emails to encourage a response – short, to the point, and with clearly marked action items. Make the subject reflect the urgency and the required response: “Can you send me the financial summary by the Tuesday staff meeting?”, not “Staff”. If the mail is fast to read and process, the response is far more likely to be swift.
2. Wait. If you get no reply, you need to decide wisely how long to wait before taking further action. Wait too long and your work will suffer; be too hasty and you’ll come across as a nuisance, with equally adverse results. The optimal time to wait depends on the situation – who your recipient is, how busy they are, what your relationship is, and in particular, what action is required at their end. If you asked someone to do some lengthy work for you, you can’t rewrite them the next day: it’s obvious they’ll need a few days to find the time!
3. Resend. Once the time has elapsed that you deem appropriate, you can resend your message. Prefix the previous subject with RESEND: , in capitals, to make it stand out; most people may respond more readily if they realize their guilt. Add to the body a polite one-liner, whether “Still awaiting your response…”, or “I really need this by <date>”, or simply “??   : )” and sign “Thanks, <yourname>”. Keep this short and lighthearted, matching the tone to your relationship with the recipient.
4. Phone. Either after the resend fails to elicit reaction, or in its place, pick up the phone and call. If you get the guy in person, that’s best; if not, you can leave a message pointing them to your email – note that many people have faster turnaround for voice mail than for email processing. And with the persistent caller ID that is becoming ubiquitous on cellphones, just calling and getting no reply may cause the person to see that you called and call you back.
5. Get help. Assuming the recipient is in a remote location, try to find someone there who can grab them in person for you – someone more likely to respond to you because they’re less busy, or your friend, or because it’s their job – like the recipient’s admin or TA.
6. Know when to give up. Sometimes it’s just no use… if the recipient is not a close associate, they may simply choose not to interact with you. The important thing is to identify the point of diminishing returns, and stop trying to communicate. After a couple of resends, it just makes little sense to persist.

One thing is relevant to all these steps – always imagine yourself in your recipient’s shoes. It’s rare that they ignore you out of malice; try to imagine their workload, their daily routine, and where you fit into it. Then optimize your communications to be considerate and effective for the them as well as for you. It’s polite – and it’s effective in eliciting a reply!

Driving and <anything other than driving> don’t mix well, as I recently pointed out. Unfortunately, the number of <things other than driving> that you can do in a car grows fast as new technologies turn our cars into mobile electronic appliances with ever more computing, communications and multimedia capabilities. The more screens, computers, GPS systems and cellular communications on board, the less will the driver keep his or her eyes on the road!

It is encouraging, then, to read that Ford has responded to this issue and will introduce, in selected 2011 models, features specifically intended to prevent distraction. The new MyFord Touch system has a large “Do Not Disturb” button, which will block incoming phone calls and text-message alerts while the vehicle is moving. Incoming calls, we are told, will be diverted to your cell phone’s voicemail, but you can still make voice-activated outbound calls.

Furthermore, the system will lock out – disable – some features  while the vehicle is in motion, even without driver command. These include pairing a Bluetooth phone, browsing the web, playing videos and editing photos. Anything that requires typing on the keypad is prohibited while the car is moving.

You don’t say! Drivers won’t be allowed to edit photos while driving?! How cruel!…

A manager recently described to me his system for handling his incoming email, which he viewed as quite inadequate. He would go through his voluminous new mail each day, then move it all to one folder. At least he wasn’t keeping it in the Inbox like the “I’ve got 6,000 messages in my Inbox” crowd; but his problem was that when he’d need to find a message again he often couldn’t.

Some people solve the problem by maintaining a carefully defined folder hierarchy to archive old messages; for others, this just doesn’t match the way they work. But even if you do have a good filing system, after a while there are just too many messages, and you can forget who sent you the one you’re looking for, or where it would fit. The fact is that knowledge workers spend 15% of their work time on searching for information (according to a Basex study made in 2008). Another fact is that they don’t always find the stuff, even if they know with certainty that it’s on their hard disk, within the clutter of documents, files and mail messages they’d stored there themselves.

This is a serious problem. Knowledge work is often an exercise in associative thinking: you vaguely recollect that someone had once sent you a message with an attachment that had a nugget of valuable information for your current task; you find it, and it points you to another source, or suggests another search… whereas if you can’t find the first item you may miss a key point. And nothing is more maddening than knowing the data is in there, and having no idea how to get to it – like the manager I was talking to.

Enter Desktop Search tools. This is the class of software tools that do for your hard disk what Google does for the web. Not surprisingly, Google makes one of them (Google Desktop); there are many others, some new, some old. The first one, though, is long gone: I remember fondly Alta Vista Personal, from the folks that gave us the first really good web search engine. Windows 7 also claims to have such capability, but so far I haven’t found it very effective; I prefer to get a tool from someone who specializes in the tool’s domain.

My favorite for some years now has been X1 Search, a truly powerful tool that combines full text Boolean search with a built-in preview for most any kind of file. This tool can find in one second any appearance of a search expression anywhere on my disk – in files, mails, contacts, attachments, files within zip archives… and while I do keep a rough hierarchy of subject folders, I don’t even bother to use it; searching is faster and more certain. With this tool, I have total mastery over my stored information; without it I’d be totally handicapped in my work. If you’re into any kind of serious knowledge work, you must have this, or a similar, tool; check out what’s available here. It will cut down a chunk of those 15% of wasted time…

In a previous post we saw that it’s all too easy for your email to find its way to people you hadn’t meant it for. So, what can you do when sending a sensitive message, to prevent such embarrassment (or worse)?

Here are some tactics to consider:

• You can put in the message an explicit plea for discretion, such as “For your eyes only” or “DO NOT FORWARD”. You can also put “[Private]” in the subject, though that may draw the attention of hackers and people passing by an unlocked PC in the recipient’s absence. But of course, this is only a first line of defense…
• Before hitting SEND, read through the To and CC fields carefully – make sure you’re sending to whoever you think you are. This is especially true if you’re mailing to a mixed group having people both internal and external to your company.
• Be proactive: formulate sensitive messages as if you know they’ll leak. For instance, remove the “tail” of earlier exchanges, and then allude to it indirectly: don’t say “I agree with you that it was probably George who stole Jennifer’s wallet from her office, he always seemed dishonest to me”; say instead only “I think you’re right about what happened, and I’m not surprised, knowing the person involved”. Your correspondent will know what you mean, but if she accidentally shares your message no one else will.
• Encrypt any really sensitive information in a file and attach it to your email. And don’t rely on Pig Latin; there are powerful encryption tools available out there!
• And despite all that – you should always assume that sooner or later your mail will be shared with people you hadn’t intended to see it. If you can’t accept this risk at all, don’t send the message via email – period!

Lastly: you are a recipient yourself. Protect your friends and coworkers by not disclosing their messages to others, unless you’re sure they’d approve. Do unto others…

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for an article on Multitasking by Thea O’Connor, an Australian journalist and health promotion consultant. Of course I visited her web site and I discovered a refreshingly different campaign Thea is crusading for: the Napping Project. The idea being, that “napping is a refreshing and proven solution to tiredness in a time-poor world” – and thus, her intent is to establish the mini-siesta as a socially acceptable and valued practice in our personal and working lives.

At first glance sleeping on the job sounded weird, but then I realized that unless you’re a jet pilot (and possibly if you are too, and you have a copilot) that short nap may be an excellent idea. Not to mention that in today’s brave new world “On the Job” is increasingly fuzzy, thanks to the technology and other trends that did away with our work/life barrier. With Information and Work overload making us all increasingly stressed and tired, and work hours extending into the night, taking a 15 minute nap makes a lot more sense than guzzling another dose of Caffeine and trying to stay awake; and the outcome is sure to make us less stressed and more productive overall. For my part, I do take short rest breaks in the workday if I can; I’m considering going all the way and joining Thea’s project…

Of course, we need to learn how to nap – Thea says you should not sleep more than 20 minutes if you want to wake in an alert state, and many people may not be able to fall asleep in such a short time. My late grandfather, I recall, was definitely able to do it: a busy businessman, he had the capacity to sit in an armchair and fall asleep instantly for a few minutes before going into his next meeting or task; a skill I much envy. He also had an ironclad Work/Life barrier – I may tell you another time.

So what do you think? Would you promote a nap-safe culture in your workplace?