Manage Tasks, Projects & Life with Email

Data Smog: Newest Culprit in Brain Drain
By Bridget Murray
American Psychological Association Monitor

"Psychologists are beginning to study the impact that information overload is having on our lives.
Welcome to the jumble—the dizzying information glut of the late 20th century. Information has never been as easy to access—or as distracting. But what is this surge of stimuli doing to our well-being?

According to some psychologists and researchers, the “data smog” that bombards us every day may be making us ill by interfering with our sleep, sabotaging our concentration and undermining our immune systems. David Lewis, PhD, a British psychologist, calls the malady “information fatigue syndrome.”

“Our brains aren’t wired to ‘multitask’ the way our computers are,” says psychologist Larry Rosen, PhD, a human-computer dynamics expert and psychology professor at California State University–Dominguez Hills. “We’re taxing the limits of our human abilities.”

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Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!
Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD
Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. (Ballantine Books)

CrazyBusy – the modern phenomenon of brain overload – is a national epidemic.

Are you too busy? Are you always running behind? Is your calendar loaded with more than you can possibly accomplish? Is it driving you crazy? You’re not alone. CrazyBusy–the modern phenomenon of brain overload–is a national epidemic. Without intending it or understanding how it happened, we’ve plunged ourselves into a mad rush of activity, expecting our brains to keep track of more than they comfortably or effectively can.

CrazyBusy is not just a by-product of high-speed, globalized modern life–it has become its defining feature. BlackBerries, cell phones, and e-mail 24/7. Longer work days, escalating demands, and higher expectations at home. It all adds up to a state of constant frenzy that is sapping us of creativity, humanity, mental well-being, and the ability to focus on what truly matters.

In fact, as Attention Deficit Disorder expert and bestselling author Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., argues in this groundbreaking book, brain overload has reached the point where our entire society is suffering from culturally induced Attention Deficit Disorder.

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Parsing the Problem

Email has become the universal funnel. Due to its ease and utility, that funnel has become quite filled. The problem is no longer the supply or availability of information. Now the question is… what to do with it?

The missing link: management of tasks flowing through the email stream.

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Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email
Steve Whittaker and Candace Sidner
Lotus Development Corp.

"Email is one of the most successful computer applications yet devised. Our empirical data show however, that although email was originally designed as a communications application, it is now being used for additional functions that it was not designed for, such as task management and personal archiving. We call this email overload. We demonstrate that email overload creates problems for personal information management.

“Research has not yet addressed how people organize and manage large amounts of information”

“Email has evolved to a point where it is now used for multiple purposes: document delivery and archiving; work task delegation; and task tracking.”

“Task management requires users to ensure that information relating to current tasks is readily available. This both preserves task context and allows users to determine the progress of ongoing tasks. Task management also involves reminding oneself about when particular tasks or actions have to be executed. How do people do this in email?”

Why do these problems arise? A simple one-touch model of email might assume: incoming messages that are informational, i.e. those not requiring a response, are read, and then either deleted or filed, depending on their relevance.

Our quantitative data show the one touch model is patently incorrect.

“Why is the inbox so full? It turns out that there are two related reasons for this:

(a) the inbox operates as a task manager, where people are reminded of current tasks, and where people can keep information relevant to those tasks accessible

(b) people find it hard to file information to remove it from their inbox, both because filing into folders is difficult and there may also be few benefits to creating folders.

Redesigning email to fit its functions

There are both design and theoretical implications to these results.

Although email was originally designed for asynchronous communication, the application is actually being used for multiple functions. Email therefore needs to be redesigned to support filing and task management as well as asynchronous communication.

We have shown that the inbox is often used as a place for incomplete tasks, unfiled information and ongoing conversations. In all these cases, users preserve working information in the inbox both to keep it available and as a reminder that further actions are required.

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Taskmaster: Recasting Email as Task Management
Victoria Bellerotti, Nicholas Ducheneaut, Mark Howard, Ian Smith
Palo Alto Research Center

“We identified seven specific problems that participants in our studies experience with task management in email:

1. Keeping track of lots of concurrent actions: One’s own to-dos and to-dos one expects from others.

2. Marking things as important or outstanding amongst the less important items.

3. Managing activity extending over time or keeping track of threads of activity and discussions.

4. Managing deadlines and reminders, which may be associated with particular messages or other content.

5. Collating related items (e.g., an extended thread or responses to a survey) and associated files and links.

6. Application switching and window management.

7. Most importantly, getting a task-oriented overview at a glance, rather than scrolling around and inspecting folders.

CONCLUSION

Our research shows that it is possible to significantly and positively affect email users’ experience by embedding task management resources directly in the inbox, where they are most needed. “

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A simple, powerful, universal solution: The Poingo Bounceback Server

The Poingo Bounceback Server simply returns a copy of any email you send, back to you at the time interval you specify.

For example, if you send, copy, or blind copy your email to 1d@poingo.com, that email will return to you in one day (1d). It works also for weekly and monthly intervals (1w@poingo.com and 1m@poingo.com, for example). Intervals up to 1 year are supported.


Address, copy, or bcc (blind copy) your email to interval@poingo.com
Your email will bounce back to you at that interval
This example shows an interval of 10 days (10d)

Users are essentially entering their email into a virtual tickler system with only a couple of keystrokes. This enables the user to easily manage hundreds of business or personal transactions, programming each for customized follow-ups, completely within their workflow, with negligible additional work.

The Poingo Bounceback Server allows the user complete control over the customization of each follow-up program.

Users find their “bounced-back” emails in their inbox the morning of the day it was requested, allowing them to stay current with all tasks requiring action on that day, whether days, weeks or months later. When they execute the desired follow-up, they often elect to send a copy again to the Bounceback Server for continued tracking.


Daily reminders in your inbox.

This deceptively simple idea has the potential for viral growth.

We envision a time in the very near future when “tickling an email” will be as meaningful as “Googling” a topic.

“Hey, I really need to remember to call about that. I will ”tickle” it for 2 weeks from now.”

This is not a pipedream. Hundreds of fanatical users now stay on top of their game with iTickleMe Email Tickler System.

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History

In early 2004, I was a classic power emailer, trying to manage millions of dollars of construction with a hodgepodge of separate applications and paper systems. The increased centrality of email to almost all business processes became increasingly apparent. I dreamed of a system that would integrate custom-interval follow-up within his email system.

Repeated searches turned up no viable solutions. I brainstormed the idea with son Matt (now an electrical engineer), then hired a developer and built the system. It has been online and working reliably since April 2004.

Fulfilling Needs

Email Overload: By providing a safe, reliable place to store future task-related emails, iTickleMe Email Tickler System allows users to remove them from cluttering their mailbox until they are needed. Users have an additional choice when a new email comes in. In addition to deleting, responding or filing, they can now “iTickleMe”.

Task Management: Most work tasks are eventually discussed in an email. When such emails are incoming, they can simply be “Poingo-ed” for future action. Or users can request action from others in an outgoing email and copy iTickleMe. Workers can also generate new emails with to-do items and send them only to the Bounceback Server for later action. This is essentially a self-addressed reminder.

High Efficiency:

Bounceback Server users can create a follow-up reminder in as little as one keystroke. How?

User enters frequently used intervals in his address book; let’s say 2w@poingo.com. If his email system auto completes the addressee, user need only type “2”, and the rest of the address will appear. You can’t get more efficient than that!

Brain Overload: The original email is the carrier for the follow-up reminder, so the original message content is 100% preserved. Seamless continuation of the project easy. No need to refer to other documents to get “up to speed”.

Open the reminder email and the original information appears. Continue where you left off. Very easy on tired, overloaded minds.


Try it free.