CYBERSPACE — Unable to go without just a glance at your inbox? Checking your Blackberry every time you get a chance? Late for appointments while you sort and delete another round of spam? Stressed during vacations because you can’t check your messages? Sending yourself email just to make sure the system still works? Marsha Egan thinks she may have a 12-step program for you.Egan is an executive coach in Pennsylvania who believes that “There is a crisis in corporate America, but a lot of CEOs don’t know it.”
The “crisis,” as she explained to Reuters, is America’s misuse of email, which Egan contends costs businesses millions of dollars in squandered time and productivity.
The average time spent dealing with a single piece of email is four minutes, according to Egan. While they are focused on their mail, nothing else is getting done, which is why her first step in breaking from the tyranny of electronic correspondence is to “admit that email is managing you. Let go of your need to check email every 10 minutes.”
From there Egan proposes addicts “commit to keeping your inbox empty,” which seems likely to be especially challenging for those with messages that need replies. In order to do this, one of the next steps is to “establish regular times to review your email” and “deal immediately with any email that can be handled in two minutes or less.” With Egan’s plan, it’s ok to “create a file for mails that will take longer.”
In Egan’s opinion, the average person shouldn’t find it necessary to check email more than three or four times a day. For those with high volume inboxes, the solution may have more to do with time management, the kinds of messages being received, and the sender’s use of subject lines. Vague subject lines can obscure a message that needs attention, just as overly enthusiastic subject lines can draw notice to notes better left for leisure time.
In some cases, the solution is a simple one: tell people to call you on the phone.
Egan doesn’t host any in-the-flesh 12-step meetings to help her clients get control of their lives back, but she is pondering the possibility of a monthly teleconference.
