unifiedinbox.com

Email etiquette for better team interpersonal relations – a founders view

2012-02-01T14:56:00.001+13:00

Toby Ruckert. The nature of written and spoken words are quite different:

The spoken word carries the most potent power at the given present moment, allowing for prompt reaction, leading to conversation and thus less room for speculation.

The written word instead lives and breathes with interpretation, based on circumstances and different individual perceptions in which there is plenty of room for misunderstandings.

Therefore when working in a global team, possibly with very different cultures involved, it is best to agree on some basic ground rules not just for email but for all your written communication. From own experience I know that the following things definitely helped productivity and team spirit:

in our teams as a general rule we avoid the use of superlatives, as they often indicate strong emotions which may heighten the existing emotional response of the reader so that they interpret the message content in an overly emotional way.
we encourage each other to pro-actively start a message with the information that we are having a bad day or similar, so the (emotional) context of the subsequent writing is brought into perspective.
I think every existing team member now knows that we don’t write in CAPITAL letters unless it’s absolutely necessary to explain a problem, but even then – they would first consider opting for bold, italics or underline font styles instead, as they are normally sufficient to get the message across, right?
absolutely no swearing: it never does or did anybody or anything any good. Do you really believe that “more better” stuff “got done” because you (as CEO or investor) swore at something or somebody? Chances are that with every time you publicly swear at something or at somebody, you – on a personal level – just lose a little bit of the respect of that team member. This may not impact ones professional standing immediately, but I am sure that it does long term, even though it seems to be a fun hobby for some leaders in the worlds startup community;
stopping the usage of unnecessary repetitions or irregular use of punctuation marks such as .. or ……. or ???? or ?!??? or !!!!! – what use do they have any way? Everybody interprets them differently! Using exclamation marks, full stops etc. is the historic way to communicate and nothing is wrong with them, but what exactly do overly done repetitions mean? Use a “?” for a question, the question does not become stronger if there are “??????” behind it. Use “…” and not “..” as it conveys a laissez-fair (don’t care) attitude. Using “…….” conveys “this issue is a never never ending story, I could go on and on about it -> ‘you keep failing’”

So as early as possible in the start-ups life make your team aware of these points and discuss it with them. Personal bad habits need not be easily welcomed in professional relations, it’s easy enough to at least once discuss this together → particularly when you’re still a young and dynamic company with few staff. It’s far easier to do at this time than trying to build that into corporate company culture later.

To an extent I can understand that as the CEO of a big corporate you may not want to go into these reviews of communication styles personally. But as the Founder of a company, there is no way around this kind of thing and it is better to be prepared rather than to be taken by surprise.

This simple matter can affect productivity and progress of your company significantly, it can build good team morale, respect for each other, loyalty and can become part of your companies culture early on.

Needless to say that I’m trying hard to live up to my just posted standards!

Originally posted: Toby’s Posterous

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - learn new skills

2012-01-09T15:22:00.001+13:00

In our original blog on New Year’s Resolutions and how to keep them, we noted that amongst the most popular category of resolution were the “be better somehow” resolutions.

So in this category we find the “learn new stuff” resolution. It sounds good, most “be better somehow” resolutions do but let’s get specific on why you would want to make this your resolution for 2012.

Living in competitive and constantly changing times most of us are aware that that the skills we learnt yesterday aren’t the ones that are valuable today. We could wait until this is patently obvious (ie redundancy) or make 2012 the year we are proactive in updating our skills.

The other reason to focus on learning new skills, and one that current research is increasingly supporting, is that we have choices about how we age. The good news is that our brains can stay agile and responsive into our later years – the hard-work news is that we have to push our boundaries and continuing forcing our brains to learn new skills in order for this development to take place.

Additional benefits for those who decide to learn new skills in 2012 include:

Breadth in our learning gives us a range of perspectives to call upon when faced with new problems in our own areas of specialisation.
The more unfamiliar situations we deal with, the more we practise our innovative and creative thinking.
Can we add, that learning deepens our character and makes us more inspiring to those around us?

So is 2012 the year you want to make that positive step? If so, take a moment to think about what skills you could learn.

Firstly - what do you enjoy – really this is the most important criteria, all the others are secondary because if you decide to take up the most worthwhile new skill in the world but don’t enjoy it, you are highly unlikely ever to complete the learning.

Secondly:

what learning is available? Your workplace may sponsor learning of new skills they see as valuable.
what local opportunities are there to learn in the company of others – eg community colleges, night school. Many of us are motivated by our social nature. If you take a class with others and enjoy their company, you’re likely to keep going to class.
other learning opportunities – the internet can deliver on nearly any learning need you have – a quick search will generally bring up a choice of resources – from free HowTo to Hack a Day to subscription only courses.

Whatever skill you decide to focus on this year, you’re going to have to allocate time. Think carefully about the commitment you’re prepared to make and is that realistic to the lifestyle you lead. A little bit every day, is more valuable than big blocks of time every now and then.

We’d love to catch up with you this time next year and find out what new skill you took on board and how that made a positive difference to your life!

INTEGRATION GOOGLE CALENDAR: set reminders from within your inbox

2012-01-05T20:48:00.001+13:00

The latest in the Unified Inbox series of updates to make your life easier and less burdensome is the Google Calendar integration.

Adding a Google Calendar connection to your account is as simple as adding any other connection.

Whether you have added a Google Calendar connection or not, you will still be able to schedule reminders for yourself in Unified Inbox. The latest update allows you to drag any message into the Reminder folder and be asked when you would like to be reminded of it. You have here the option to keep the message out of sight until that time.

And then if you have added a connection to your Google calendar you can choose to add it to your calendar with just the click of a button.

A bright start to 2012!

2012-01-05T17:05:00.001+13:00

Read the story of the Unified Inbox team member who discovered the benefits of location-independant work the hard way.....

"I'm sure it's not just me that has those anxiety dreams about being late for a flight or running all over the airport trying to get to the gate before the plane leaves. But for me at least, until now they have only been dreams. I had the experience last week of actually missing my flight"....read more

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - keep a balance

2012-01-05T15:46:00.001+13:00

We published a blog last year that reported data from a “use of time” study that showed we are increasingly experiencing feelings of hurriedness and time famine.

If it is your resolution this year that you will create a more equitable balance between work and personal life, then we've got ways to go about it.

Just because you have the technology doesn't mean you have to use. Set aside some time each week (or day) to be technology free - this means phones too! It's amazing the things you can learn about those nearest and dearest to you when you're actually talking to each other. In addition, you can start to think about some physical spaces as technology-free - the bedroom and bathroom are good places to start. You may choose ultimately to return to a “work only in an office” mode, as a way of ensuring that your work/life balance is good.
Bring all your incoming messages into one inbox and keep all your appointments in one calendar. That need to check all those different places in order to keep on top of your life will go away. Then set aside times to work through your inbox, rather than reacting the minute a new message arrives. Given the time taken to process a message and then get back to what you were originally doing, means that doing this will add significant chunks of time back into your day.
Be smart in your use of technology – if you really have to send that email out of office hours, how about you take the recipient into consideration and schedule it to arrive during their work day.
Get a hobby, or a class or one definite appointment you have to keep each week that is not work-related. Over time you might increase the frequency but let's start out with an achievable goal. It's a great idea if this activity is fun to do with friends or family.
Take breaks. No-ones productivity improves when they work non-stop. So take a break (leave your desk) and increase your productivity for the rest of the day. If you get more done during your “work-hours” you can in good conscience "not work" for the rest of the day. Sometimes, to work faster, you just gotta work slower.

As with all the resolutions we're considering this week, make sure you start with something that is achievable in bite-sized pieces and then, all going well, increase the frequency or intensity. In this way, you may well get to the end of 2012, with that rare gift of a balanced work/personal life!

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping – improve your etiquette

2012-01-04T12:03:00.001+13:00

The etiquette written about by Miss Manners may be more concerned with the correct knife and fork to use or the suitable time to send a thank-you card but its goal of allowing social interactions to run more smoothly is just as applicable to the electronic workplace.

Email overload is a well-defined problem in workplaces today, with some organisations going so far as to ban the use of email altogether. We however believe that there are better solutions to the problem. One such solution is that each of us can take some responsibility for the burden we place on others with each email we send, and that we take the time to consider our email etiquette.

What then is good email etiquette? Here are our top seven etiquette guidelines to consider:

Be concise and to the point – remember that someone else has to take the time to read this email that you have sent in the middle of what is likely to be a busy day for them.
Check your spelling and grammar. The reason we have such rules is to ensure that our messages are easily understood. By being correct in your messages you will make your email that little bit easier to read.
Don't use capitals. It's the written equivalent of shouting. Mixed case sentences will be easier to read and comprehend.
Take the time to read back over your message (in fact, even read it out loud to yourself) and check the tone. An email dashed off in a hurry can come across as brusque or angry and lead to a pointless emotional exchange of messages. Even making sure you add a hello and goodbye will make a difference here, as well, of course, as “please” and “thank-you”.
A clear subject line. This enables the recipient to start processing the email before they open the message. In fact, for very short messages such as “see you at 5pm” - the text can be entirely in the subject line with “(eom)” at the end signifying “end of message” so your recipient knows they don't need to open the message.
If you've got a long email with a lot of action points – consider breaking it into multiple emails that can be acted on separately.
Who are you sending this message to? This could well be the guideline that makes the biggest difference to the email burden you give the world. Check that recipient list carefully. Do the people on there really need to receive this message? Every person you send to will have their day interrupted by this message – think again, do they really need to receive it?

Great email etiquette takes time and training. In terms of introducing it into your workday, take the first email you send and check it against all seven etiquette guidelines listed above. Feeling good? - then do it again for the second. That may be enough for the first day. Day 2 – make sure your first two emails out are perfect in terms of your etiquette, then do another two perfectly (just because it feels good). Each day use the list above consciously for a few more messages.

Before you know it you'll be using this list without conscious thought. By doing so, you are taking a little bit of that email burden off others. And who knows, they may start asking you how you do it, so making their outward messages that little less burdensome as well!

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping – practice focus

2012-01-03T11:20:00.001+13:00

Over 2011, we wrote several times about the myth of multi-tasking. While it seems that every job description will specify strong multi-tasking amongst the list of essential qualities for that job, research shows that we do not perform at our best while performing multiple tasks.

In fact, experiments on how multi-tasking effects our IQ shows that we drop 10 IQ points when forced to handle multiple tasks at once – which is the same level as if we had missed an entire nights sleep and is higher than the loss associated with smoking marijuana.

So, if you've taken this on board and made the decision that this year you're going to practice focus, we got some advice for how to go about it.

One of the specialist techniques available for free is Pomodoro which states that you choose a task to be accomplished, set your timer for 25 minutes, work on that task until the timer rings and then take a short (5 minute) break. At the end of every four Pomodoro units take a longer break.

Keeping with our earlier article on how to keep New Year's resolutions – there's little point deciding to switch your entire work day over to Pomodoro blocks tomorrow. Instead we recommend starting small and starting to train yourself and those around you (because it can be more difficult to train those around you than it is yourself!) to respect one (or two) focus sessions.

Another important process change that you can implement to improve your focus is the way you handle email. If you are in a job that allows for a hour or so to respond, we recommend turning off your notification sounds (and even your whole mail package) except for the three (say) times per day that you will be processing email. By not having your email on for the main part of the day, you can remove these seemingly small, yet in actuality time-consuming, interruptions and regain focus on the actual task in hand.

The final area you can implement if focus is your thing this year – put your phone down when talking to people or listening to them, and yes, this includes meetings. Make sure you catch the full message of the people you're talking to and, by modelling the behaviour you value, maybe (just maybe) they'll start listening to you without interruption too.

As with all the resolutions you plan to work on this year, it's best to have a goal in mind. A general - “I'm going to focus more” is unlikely to get a result, whereas “I'm going to practise one Pomodoro session per day and check my email no more than five times per day” may.

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - fight the clutter

2012-01-02T17:32:00.001+13:00

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” -Leonardo da Vinci

Followers of feng shui believe that clutter is low, stagnant, and confusing energy that constantly drains energy from you. Even if you're not on board for the full belief system you'd see that most of us work better in an organised rather than a messy environment.

Removing clutter from our lives is about freeing ourselves from “stuff” that takes mental energy to keep track of and care about. By removing it from our lives we are able to spend more of our time and energy on creating.

And in the tight business world of today, the ability to create is one we all need to be thinking about.

There are many articles written about ways to get rid of physical clutter and these articles contain methods such as:

the four boxes – take four boxes with you as you approach a cluttered area. These boxes are labelled “put away”, “sell/donate”, “storage” and “rubbish”. As you pick up each item, don't let it leave your hand until you place it one of the four boxes. When you have finished the area – deal with each box appropriately.
circuits – get a large carry container (such as a laundry basket) and make a circuit of the room. As you pass each out-of-place item, put it in the basket. Then do a circuit of the room, putting items away. You may need to do several circuits.
penicillian – target a small area – eg a table – and clear that. That area has been innoculated and you know not to put anything in that area. Select another small area and repeat.
box and banish – pick up everything in an area and put it in a box. Over time remove items that are needed and put them away in their proper place. At the end of a defined time period – throw away the rest of the items.

But if all these articles are written about physical clutter, there is an increasing need to consider our digital clutter. Digital clutter can be just as damaging as physical clutter. Just because it doesn’t take up any physical space, doesn’t mean digital clutter doesn’t carry the same emotional baggage and have the same impact.

So it's time to take a breath and acknowledge that our digital clutter is distracting us, causing our computers to slow down, and preventing us from getting things done that really matter. By emptying our inboxes, desktop, and other places of digital clutter, we free our resources up to write new messages, create new documents, and find new music.

So how do we go about the process of digital decluttering. The most comprehensive article we found on this topic was 25 Areas of Digital Clutter to Minimalize which covered areas from inboxes and emails (a subject we are most interested in) to documents to programmes to desktop icons. There are 25 ideas here to get you started.

One of the most common methods for each of these areas of clutter seems to be a variation on the physical box and banish method – eg: take all your email messages and put them in a temp folder and take them out as you work on them. After a week (say) any left can be permanently deleted or archived.

In keeping with the spirit of our last article on how to keep New Year's resolutions – if you decide that fighting clutter is your resolution for 2012 then make sure your goal is realistic and achievable – say one tip per day - and look forward to reaping the benefits of reduced digital clutter in your life.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 28)

2012-01-01T15:41:00.001+13:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter :

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

To paraphrase Sir Winston, e-mail is the worst form of messaging
except for all the others that have been tried.
Jonathan Spira

Brain Health, Stress and Overload
Information Fatigue Syndrome, is a new ‘Syndrome’ which many people are experiencing. Some symptoms include increased anxiety, sleeplessness, less leisure time and less enjoyment when we do take leisure due to multi-tasking, and our brain always working.

Ban email, fly pigeons!
Will Breton’s announcement set off a new trend, given that it is quite fashionable to groan about email overloads? Tech journalist Mike Arrington wrote sometime ago that he routinely declares ‘email bankruptcy’. That is, unable to cope with the thousands of emails landing in his inbox, he often closes his eyes and deletes them in one go, only to make space for the next deluge

Company ban on email gives employees a break, and maybe a different type of headache
In case you were too busy catching up on email last week and missed the media interest in the news, the French company Atos has banned internal email. Or will, over the next 18 months, as it phases out the tool for its employees. The company’s CEO, Thierry Breton, said that because only about 10 percent of the messages his employees receive is worth their time, and because too many of his people spend hours every night sifting through the internal e-mail they get every day, he’s getting rid of the stuff. Completely.

Should we send work email to the trash?
Email has moved from being the internet’s first killer app to being a productivity killer. You can make news by claiming to hate it, ban it or kill it.

London taxi drivers offer window into human brain's flexibility
Talk about information overload: becoming a taxi driver in London means memorizing all of the sightseeing destinations the city has to offer, plus the names and locations of 25,000 streets within a six-mile (9.6 kilometer) radius.

How To Reduce Information Overload
Yet another report has come out telling us what we pretty much already know. Many workers feel overwhelmed by the deluge of emails and information they are confronted with on a daily basis.

What would Socrates think of Google?
I was discussing with a college student I’ve been advising whether it was a good or a bad thing that Google makes access to answers so easy. To my surprise, she opined that it’s a bad thing.

2 out of 5 companies in Australia and New Zealand are suffering from information overload...more
Growing infoglut is costing New Zealand economy $400 million per year...more
The average employee spends 21 minutes per day looking for lost information...more

So you want to keep your New Year's resolutions this year?

2012-01-01T15:30:00.001+13:00

With the Gregorian calendar clicking over to a new year, many of us are thinking about our New Year's resolutions – those vaguely worded intentions to be a better person in some fashion or other.

For others the top resolutions are losing weight (interesting enough the least achieved resolution), exercise more, quit smoking, save more and to just be better somehow (volunteer, be less grumpy, keep a journal – you know how these go).

What is interesting about the New Year's resolution phenomenon is that a massive majority of people fail to keep their resolution – we're talking here about 88% of people making a promise to themselves that they don't keep.

So why do only 12% of people fulfill on their promises to themselves?

It seems it comes down to some pretty basic brain/body chemistry. The part of our body that regulates will-power is not that strong. When asked to resist temptation it burns up energy, and that energy has to be replaced if we are not to give in .

But there are strategies that are considered successful for dealing with temptation (in terms of resolutions you're trying to keep). The most successful strategy is distraction – whatever you do, don't think about the thing you're trying not to do. Thinking about what you can't do or have just tires you out and leaves you vulnerable to giving in. Instead make sure that whenever the subject of the thing you're trying not to do comes up, that you have an alternative to do or to think about.

If you're dead set on keeping your resolutions this year – and we've got 7 that we think are a good idea coming up this week – then you need to make sure that you include a plan for the following with the resolution itself:

Make sure that you have definite goals.
Acknowledge that you can only make resolutions for yourself – don't include others in them – because ultimately the only person in this universe you have any control over is yourself.
Make sure that the goal you set is realistic.
Don't try to change the world – moderation is the key.
Take the time to know yourself, so that the goal you set is one that you are capable of achieving.

Over the new few days we've going to publish the seven New Year's resolutions that we're actively working on. Like our Facebook page to get updates as we publish these over the next few days.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 27)

2011-12-09T16:00:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.
Bonnie Friedman.

A third of adults go online each day for no particular reason
Internet is just there, dangling over our heads like a mobile full of planets and kitties and smiley faces, and we're just staring up at it from our cribs like a bunch of little babies.

188,000,000,000 emails, 60,000,000 facebook updates, 140,000,000 tweets per day

Six top tips on email overload
Six top tips on email overload... How to achieve more efficient use of email, by two experts

Email Overload? Reclaim Your Inbox, Don’t Banish It
Excessive information (including email) is a danger to productivity. It diverts attention, derails trains of thought and increases stress. However, considering Mr. Breton’s concern over the reported high level of distraction caused by reading unnecessary email messages, I’m rather surprised at the alternatives being proposed

Zero Email Has Zero Chance, But How About An Email Diet?
Atos CEO Thierry Breton is banning company email.There’s been a lot of recent press coverage about a French company’s decision to become a “zero email” company by 2013.

You've Got Mail (But Don't Read It) : One Third of Emails Unread
I recently read that Brits receive an average of 36 emails every day but a third is never read. I wasn't surprised.

Information Overload Is Causing Illness and Costing Money, Experts Warn
The culture of modern business needs to change, with workers drowning under a deluge of emails and information, experts warned Monday

Seven Steps to Lower Information Overload
How to keep yourself sane and functional in a world awash in data. There’s a lot being said about the problem of information overload, but not much being actually done about it.

10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload
Communication is as important as it used to be, there's just way too much of it. Communication is out of control and it's killing our productivity and effectiveness. Here's how to make it stop.

7 Steps to Dealing with Information Overload
How do we know what to focus on? How can we deem what is relevant, newsworthy, or beneficial to the maintenance of our employment status without checking it out? How do we deal with info overload?

Is technology driving you crazy - or is it really your staff?
Businesses that are serious about tackling information overload need to look beyond the technology and change their company culture, says silicon.com's Steve Ranger. I once had a colleague who had a policy of only reading email if it was addressed to him and him alone.

Stress: the curse of modern technology revealed in poll
It seems as though our ability to evolve wisely is not keeping pace with the technological revolution, and that all the wonderful new technologies that we have come to rely on are controlling many of us.

Technology as a Solution: Managing Information Overload
Julie Wedgwood introduced her talk session titled “Managing Information Overload” by speaking about how much information comes our way every single day and how that could impact the way we introduce social networking into our (learning) business

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 26)

2011-12-02T14:31:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Not what you possess but what you do with what you have,
determines your true worth - Thomas Carlyle

Clay Johnson on info overload vs. info overconsumption.
We assign blame for our overconsumption in odd ways. Gulp down one too many cupcakes and that's 100% on you. Yet, if you're overwhelmed by the fire hose/deluge/tsunami of information, blame must be placed elsewhere: on those glutton-minded information sources or the overall degradation of society or ... anywhere really, as long as it doesn't reflect back on your own lack of control. Information overload seems to always be someone else's fault.

How Information Overload is Causing Brain Congestion
I visited him in the lab in Sao Paulo recently and he told me that we humans are suffering from information indigestion. “We became informivores. We eat information all the time,” he said. Which can produce some unfortunate side effects: “If you eat too much information your brain can’t digest it.”

5 Cool Ideas for avoiding information overload
The good news is that we live in an information age. The bad news is that there seems to be way too much information. Here are 5 Cool Ideas for avoiding information overload.

Information overload wastes two weeks a year
British workers have to sift through so many emails and electronic documents that they waste nearly two weeks a year searching for information they have previously read but then lost.

Email response expectations leading to stress: report
A new report has found that technology is accelerating email response times, creating unrealistic expectations, email overload, error and costly workplace stress. Author of Brilliant Email, published by Pearson in 2011, email management expert Dr Monica Seeley points out that a few years ago a response to an email was expected within a few days or even a week.

Lightening the load on your email inbox
Email can be a useful tool, but the sheer volume can be overwhelming. This year, around 349 billion emails will be sent worldwide, according to the market research firm Radicati Group Inc. That total is expected to grow to 507 billion by 2013.

6 Ways to Stop Email Overload
A recent report from market research firm The Radicati Group offers some sobering statistics about email use. The number of global email accounts is expected to grow from 3.1 billion in 2011 to almost 4.1 billion by the end of 2015 — an average annual growth rate of 7 percent. Radicati estimates that roughly 350 billion emails will be sent worldwide this year and that the number will increase to 507 billion by 2013.

Shocker: Most Americans Check Work Email During Holidays
The majority of employed American adults (68%) with work email accounts check their messages during traditional family holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Among those checking their email, 27% do so multiple times each day. Those checking their accounts are not likely to find empty inboxes as 79% of those polled say they receive emails from clients or colleagues during the holidays.

Too much information: Data overload at work damages staff motivation, survey of 2,000 employees
Employees in the UK are “drowning in droplets rather than floods of data” at work, and are struggling to navigate, organise and digest this collectively, which is costing businesses.

Do the Digital Natives burn out because of technological overload?
Do the internet, the constant accessibility and the opportunity of being online 24/7 result in overload? And are particularly the Digital Natives at the risk of burning out early in their career.

Are incoming messages unnecessary interruptions or necessary tasks?

2011-12-01T10:51:00.001+13:00

In recent months there appears to have been a proliferation of articles describing peoples attempts to work without email (you can read some here and here)

We know that this movement is in response to the overwhelming volume of incoming email but we ask if it's really the answer. We believe that managing the flow well is better than turning off the tap.

Firstly we agree with their actions in getting rid of the slightly-better-than-junk emails – the notifications you subscribed to but haven't used in some time. Simply unsubscribe.

Secondly, the newsletters and notifications that are useful, create a filter that puts them in a separate folder and schedule a time to read them to get the necessary information out of them.

Adhere to good email etiquette yourself, by only sending succinct relevant emails and spend time training those you correspond with on this.

Schedule a couple of times a day to go through incoming messages (and turn off the new message notification). Incoming messages are no longer just emails but may be coming in from a number of sources. One of the articles above made reference to their boss sending a Twitter DM instead of an email. We'd argue it's still an incoming message and will take the same processing time. In which case, it is good to have all your messages in one inbox (saves time checking multiple sources) and going through them at set times.

While doing the scheduled message check you are transforming messages into tasks – and these tasks are going to be a part of your workflow (or someone else's, if delegation is appropriate) over the next few hours, days (or weeks depending on urgency).

So despite the number of people attempting to work without email, we maintain that emails are just one form of incoming messages that every person needs to be able to manage and that getting the right training and finding the right tools is more effective than simply stopping using email.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 24)

2011-11-17T10:28:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Don't Send That Email. Pick up the Phone! more
Stop the Insanity: How To Crush Communication Overload more
Communication Overload: A Simple Technique more
Information overload more
Nine Easy Ways To Eliminate E-mail Overload more
Solving information overload: the role of manual content curation more
Tech Talk: Tips for managing your information overload more
New social media? Same old, same old, say Stanford experts more

Statistics

59% of respondants say that the amount of info they have to process at work has increased since the economic downturn more

Wisdom

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. Winston Churchill

Can information overload affect your physical health?

2011-11-14T13:18:00.001+13:00

We've seen a lot of statistics published in the last year about the growing amount of information available and the impact it has on individuals and businesses. There are three stats we wanted to look at more closely.

Employee stress levels are increased when their inboxes grow by more than 50 messages a day... source
46.9% of respondents unable to answer all email... source
35% of knowledge workers suffer from health problems traceable back to information overload... source

The reason that stress can have a negative effect is in our biology. The oldest part of our brain is charged with keeping us alive and when it comes across a situation that requires action, it pumps us full of adrenaline so that we can either fight or run away - the "fight or flight" response. When we fight or flee we burn through the adrenaline. The problem in our modern workplaces, is that neither fighting or fleeing are typically seen as appropriate responses, meaning the adrenaline stays within our systems.

Too much adrenaline in our systems can effect every part of our body from hair, brain, mouth, muscles, heart, lungs, digestive tract, reproductive organs to skin. The American Institute of Stress has information outlining the many manifestations of stress.

Now consider a typical modern work-day where a constant stream of messages arrive demanding a portion of your attention and a response. For many information workers that stream of messages can appear never-ending and they may feel unable to keep up the incoming torrent. These are classic conditions for developing stress related conditions.

In our next blog we look at how we can be healthy in our work even with the ever increasing volumes of information being created in the world today.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 23)

2011-11-10T13:01:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Email overload, Twitter updates, monster slippers... Top 10 ways to avoid distractions at work more
Email Management Tips for Improved Productivity more
Your Wheelhouse (In or Out of your Inbox) more
Conquer Email Overload - Some Quick and Simple Solutions more
Information Overload – Finding Balance On-Line more
This Is What a Healthy Information Diet Looks Like more
Dealing with "Information Overload" more
Conquering Information Overload more
Ending email overload more
Have you got Goldfish Memory Syndrome? more

Statistics

53% of people believe that less than half the information they receive is valuable more

Wisdom

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.- Albert Einstein
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all - Oscar Wilde

INTEGRATION EVERNOTE: extending the power of Unified Inbox

2011-10-25T11:54:00.001+13:00

The UIB team were regular users of Evernote, as our way of keeping our notes handy, searchable and shareable. We saw the potential to bring these qualities into our key working application - unifiedinbox.com

With the Evernote integration, our users can login once to UIB and see their Evernote folders along with their message folders.

The work flow improvements we've seen so far from this integration:

policies, procedures and instructions. We save them in our Evernote notebooks and then any member of our team (whom we have given access to) can also view these notes.
getting paper documents around the world. Being a globally distributed team, on occasion, one office receives a paper document that needs to be commented on by a team member in another country. The receiver scans the document into Evernote and then in UIB, assigns that note, along with comments to the recipient. The recipient finds this message in their inbox.
making it easy to comment and ask questions about documents. One of our team members has a notebook that they scan all their travel receipts into. In UIB, the accountants have access to this notebook. Whenever they have a question about an expense, they ask this question via the comments functionality, keeping the integrity of the original record intact.

We're sure there are more workflow improvements that the Evernote integration can offer and we look forward to finding them.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 20)

2011-10-20T12:52:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Want to be more productive? Don’t file your email more
11 Tips: Dealing with Information Overload more
Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now more
E-Hoarding Is Unhealthy more
Managing Digital Information Overload – Is Technology The Cause & The Cure? more
BlackBerry crumble reveals the depth of our email addiction more
Top 10 Tricks for Dealing With Email Overload more
Lightening the load on your email inbox: Five tips more
The Secret to Avoiding Email Overload: Canned Responses more

Statistics

40% of Tablet and Smartphone Owners Use Them While Watching TV more
Sheer overload” is reported as the biggest problem with email as a business tool, followed closely by “Finding and recovering past emails” and “Keeping track of actions. more
25% of all time spent online is devoted to social media more

Wisdom

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending - Maria Robinson

October 20th is Information Overload Awareness Day

2011-10-19T14:38:00.001+13:00

- what steps will you take to reduce overload?

We would definitely recommend catching up with the advice given by the founders of Information Overload Awareness Day - this can be found here. Their challenge is to send 10% fewer emails on this day.

For those still undecided on how to complete this challenge you may want to sign up for our Twitter series that has daily tips on how to manage in our information rich world.

You can find the collected series of tips, statistics and wisdom here in our regular blog.

And of course, there is always the option to sign-up for a month-long free trial of Unified Inbox - the product designed to keep information overload under control.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 19)

2011-10-14T11:12:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

How to stop e-mail overload? Think before you hit send... more
5 Tips to Beat Email Overload... more
Dealing with e-mail is NOT a task... more
In Praise Of Print Versions... more
Adaptation and Loss... more
A list of what not to do can be handy... more

Statistics

70% of respondents admitted to disrupting virtual meetings and webcasts to answer their mobile phone... more

Wisdom

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone - Neale Donald Walsch
Information is the seed for an idea, and only grows when it's watered. - Heinz V. Bergen

Moments of stillness

2011-10-10T11:22:00.001+13:00

Are your days spent rushing from one urgent ("the world will explode if you don't answer this email!") task to another? Are you finding that the urgent, not important, parts of your day are starting to take over from the important, not urgent?

If so, then your body is being subjected to constant adrenaline rushes.

You may be aware of adrenaline and its role in our survival - it's the "flight or fight" hormone. A sabre tooth tiger appears and we either need to run fast and fight hard with that big stick. This activity then burns through the adrenaline.

The problem with our modern lives is that we're putting ourselves in situations where we flood with adrenaline but it is not socially acceptable to run or fight, allowing the adrenaline to build up in our bodies.

What solutions are there for handling the demands of modern worklife?

The most basic defence is to look after yourself, to ensure that your diet and exercise are sufficient to ensure a strong and resilient body.

The second level of defence is to train yourself to be active, rather than reactive. One of the training strategies for this is to take moments of stillness during your day.

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

In Unified Inbox we built in our Wise Quotes to run on start-up. They are a reminder for us, that as we login to prepare for another day of running a software startup, to be still for a moment. The ideal start to our days is when we approach our mail (generally considered a stressor task in modern overloaded lives) with a sense of calm, rather than a sence of trepidation.

Our quotes can also be accessed via our Twitter feed - we hope they make a difference to your day as well.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 18)

2011-10-07T13:54:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Letter From Paris: 28 Days (Without the Internet) more
6 Ways to Stress Less About Your Email Inbox at Work more
How to Fight Email Overload more
From information overload and anxiety to peace and BEING ENOUGH more
Work without E-mail: Is it Possible? more
Dealing with the email overload more

Statistics

Some 55 per cent of enterprises will have adopted cloud email and collaboration services (CECS) by 2020, more

Wisdom

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern recognition. -Marshall McLuhan

Standard work hours - do they still exist?

2011-10-03T09:42:00.001+13:00

We blogged recently on the subject of work location and how the nature of work is changing - insofar as many people are no longer going to work each day in an office.

Now that technology changes have allowed "work" to take place at cafes, in cars and at home, we find that the definition of work time has also changed.

You may find that you or your co-workers work any of the following schedules

nine to five - you are still required onsite in a certain location at certain hours
job-share - a person is still required on-site at certain hours but you share that with someone else
flexitime - the work can done at times that suit you, rather than fitting to the organisations schedule
freelance - you decide what work needs to be done and when it needs to be done.

As long ago as 2005 - it was estimated that one third of workers participated in some way in the freelance economy. And that figure is going up.

In the same way that our independence from location is fuelled by the rise of mobile devices and cloud based services, so is our independence from notion of office hours.

There are different viewpoints on whether this change is for the better with some saying the productivity goes up when people choose their own work hours and some saying that stress levels increase without the structure of nine-to-five.

What is your opinion on changes in work hours - are they for the better?

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 17)

2011-09-29T10:25:00.001+13:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Managing Email Overload more
Column: Fighting technology overload ... with an old cell phone more
Cut the Noise and Cut to the Chase! more
Irritating email habits and how to fix them more
Bogged Down in Endless Emails and Reports? How to Deal with Information Overload more
Dealing with Information Overload more
Information Overload? Wear a Toilet Roll hat. more
Commentary: Information overload a time killer more

Statistics

288,355 books published in 2009 in the US alone, as compared to 51,000 books 25 years ago. more
Opening emails in mobile devices has jumped from 7% to 15% in one year more

Wisdom

One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with. - Marshall McLuhan

Getting great results from a team inbox

2011-09-26T12:01:00.001+13:00

Increasingly businesses are starting to set up team inboxes for various functions in their business - support@, marketing@ and sales@ are common uses.

The big benefit of a team inbox is that you don't need to worry that an important email is stuck in the mailbox of a staff member who is away sick. And with a team structure for busy inboxes, more people can easily be allocated to clear backlogs.

Team inboxes are also used between PA and manager. In this case, the PA can ensure that the more mundane emails are handled, leaving only the more important messages for the attention of the manager.

Unfortunately there is a downside to running a good team inbox. Mesmo consultancy deals with this issue in a recent blog. Here they identify emails being overlooked or answered twice as the key problems that businesses encounter when running a team inbox.

As we see it the key problem of emails being overlooked or answered twice is a problem of not knowing who is responsible for an individual message.

In the Unified Inbox team inboxes every message is assigned to an individual team member for handling. This team member can assign it to another team member with questions and have the message assigned back to them with the answer. At all times, all the messages are visible in the inbox, so a team manager can be sure the inbox is being processed as it should.

Click here if you would like to trial Unified Inbox as your team inbox today.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 16)

2011-09-23T10:33:00.001+12:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Toilus interruptus more Graphic description of the interuptions many of us face in a working day.
Cyberpunk Librarian: Dealing With Information Overload more Is deleting material unread bad?
Information Overload Makes Us Dazed and Confused more
Getting out from under information overload more
Five Methodologies to Deal with Email Overload more Review of 5 well-publicised methods of dealing with overload
My Single Most Powerful Productivity Trick more
How Email Can Change Your Life more
Top tips for dealing with information overload more
In praise of the good old stupidphone more
Social Media Filtering: Avoiding Chaos and Losing Serendipity? more
Replies to “Dealing with your cognitive load” – Part one of four more

Statistics

$1.2 billion each: The hidden cost of people complexity to the top 200 more
31% of respondents admit to disrupting face-to-face meetings to answer their mobile phones. more
In the last fifteen years, the incidence of ADD has increased more than 30 percent more

Wisdom

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. - Gandhi

How location dependant are you?

2011-09-16T13:20:00.001+12:00

Do you leave your home in the morning and commute to the same physical workplace each day? If so, you may have noticed that change is afoot.

The increasing availability of cloud computing and mobile devices means that defining work in terms of a physical location is a thing of the past for many people. Their workplace is the spare room of the house, the car, a coffee shop or a clients office.

This change is demanding that we re-assess what we call work and where it happens.

In terms of work/life balance it was once easy to say if it happened at work, then it was work and everything else was personal. But now we hear stories about people who answer their emails in bed and we know things have changed.

And while answering emails after-hours is often presented as a negative change, for many the freedom from hours of commuting is a major positive change that they have gained from becoming location-independent.

The ability to define boundaries (independent of location) will be a factor in how well we acclimatize to the new work environments. What positive and negative outcomes do see coming out of these changing work environments?

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 15)

2011-09-15T09:53:00.001+12:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Email overload: Cut down on inbox clutter with these expert tips more
In Defense of Distraction more It's long but well-worth the time put aside to read and absorb.
Organizational Skills: How to Process Email and Deal with Information Overload more
Email overload - getting people to respond more
Overcoming information overload at work more
Information meltdown.more Great updating graphic of the overload we are exposed to
Curation Nation: The Rise of Content Entrepreneurs (Part 1) more

Statistics

41% of workers remain glued to their communication devices, sending instant messages; responding to texts; listening to voicemails; or checking their emails. more
It would take exactly 68,636 tweets to reproduce Proust's most famous work. more

Wisdom

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family. - Kofi Annan

The leaders role in managing information overload

2011-09-09T12:07:00.001+12:00

Jonathan Spira is one of the leading authorities on the subject of Information Overload in the world today. His book "Overload" is packed full of information on the subject and its cost to ordinary businesses.

In a recent blog he talked about the impact of Information Overload on leaders. Here he talked about how his research showed that leaders in an organisation have only 5% of their day available for thought and reflection. And that the biggest drain on a leaders time is information-overload related problems which take a full quarter of their day.

In a statement that seems to be at odds with modern managerial thought, he states that leaders need to reduce their information exposure, as a key portion of their role is to think and that this is the time they need to reclaim.

He also states that leaders need to engage in how to anticipate, manage and reduce the ever increasing amounts of information that workers in the organisation are exposed to. They need to do this to avoid incurring the costs of Information Overload problems. You can use his research to estimate the cost to your own organisation using this calculator.

It is analysis by people such as Jonathan Spira that led us to develop the Unified Inbox product as a way to handle the information deluge that has become a part of modern work-life. If you would like to trial Unified Inbox for free, then check out the free monthly trial offer, and start putting control of information overload back into your own hands.

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 14)

2011-09-07T12:42:00.001+12:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

quitting the internet aftermath: my plan more One womans plan that includes daily dance parties.
Review: The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, by Eli Pariser more
Outsourcing your cognitive overload more
Has Personalized Filtering Gone Too Far? more
How to Avoid Information Overload – Separating Signal from Noise more
This Week in Review: Is social media killing big ideas?. more
Information Overload – Five Authors’ Points-of-View more
Discovery Engines: Policing The Riot Of Information Overload more The next step on from a search engine.
Is it information overload or complexity? more
Struggling with information overload. more

Stats

Every 60 seconds, more than twenty hours of video material is uploaded to YouTube more
People require only 1.2 seconds on average to scan and assess the importance of an email more
The Internet today contains in excess of 25 billion web pages on 110 million sites more

Wisdom

Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience - Jonas Salk

Decision fatigue - how big an impact can it have?

2011-09-05T13:38:00.001+12:00

The New York Times recently published an excellent article entitled Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue? In this article they explored the fact that not all decisions we make are equally as good and these decisions can vary widely depending on how alert or fatigued we are.

The article starts with an exploration of a piece of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In this research the authors looked at what decisions judges made regarding parole for a series of prisoners. They found that the time of day had a profound impact on whether the judges granted parole or not. 8.50am was a good time to appear before a judge, 4.25pm was a bad time.

"The mental work of ruling on case after case, whatever the individual merits, wore them down."

This evidence pointed the researchers to the concept of decision fatigue. That every decision we make, tires us, sometimes to the point where we choose to make the safest decisions.

"Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain. You start to resist any change, any potentially risky move — like releasing a prisoner who might commit a crime. So the fatigued judge on a parole board takes the easy way out, and the prisoner keeps doing time."

The full article is lengthy but well worth reading to discover what we can do to be aware of this happening in our lives and what we are able to do to make the best decisions possible.

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-09-01T10:25:00.001+12:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

5 Ways To Cut Email Overload. more
Frying your brains on information overload: Old perspectives on a new issue. more
Learning to Simplify and Control Email, RSS Feeds and Other Nonessential Materials. more
Should you respond to every email. more - opinions from experts in the field.
Email Overload – Where the CEO of Xerox and I disagree. more
The E-Tool Bill of Rights. more

Statistics

1 billion tweets sent per week. more

Wisdom

Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. - Clarence Day

INTEGRATION FACEBOOK:

2011-08-30T11:26:00.001+12:00

While Facebook started as a dating tool for Harvard students and quickly became the personal social tool of choice, its businesses uses have also grown. For a business today to not to have a Facebook page is akin to not having a phone number.

Managing that Facebook page can be a challenge in it's own right. While Facebook is a crucial social app for a business to use – it is just one more in a long list of applications that a team has to manage.

At Unified Inbox we take the problem of “application overload” as seriously as it's more commonly known cousin “information overload”, so we included Facebook as one of the first social applications that we integrated into Unified Inbox.

Status updates from the inbox
Our Facebook page status updates are updated directly from within Unified Inbox. When a member of our team has something they want to share, they go through the same process as if they were sending an email.

Ensure messages are handled by best team member
When one of our followers sends us a message, that message arrives directly in our inbox which means it is then able to be assigned to any member of our team to work on and respond to.

Keep on top of wall posts, comments and likes
While we're working, any team member with the associated rights can check on our wall and comment or like any of the posts that our followers have made. The notifications of these posts comes into our inbox, so again it can be assigned to the most appropriate team member to respond.

We like using Facebook through Unified Inbox because it means there is one less applicaton we have to have open on our desktop. And given that Unified Inbox is accessible from any web-enabled device, our team are able to do this work anywhere. If you'd like to trial this integration for free, then we have one month free trials on all our paid plans. Sign-up here today!

INTEGRATION TWITTER: Team tweets from your inbox

2011-08-26T19:10:00.001+12:00

Five years on from start-up, it would be a rare business that does not have an active Twitter account. Yet many find the management of a Twitter presence still needs some fine-tuning.

For a business running a Twitter account – do you give all the people who need to work on it the username and password?
Do you need to open a specialised package (be it Twitter or one of the suite of products that has evolved) to manage your presence?

At Unified Inbox we thought there were better ways to manage our Twitter presence and added them into the build of our product.

We tweet from our mailbox.
For our team, sending a Tweet is exactly the same as sending an email. It's all done from the inbox so that only one package needs to be open and running on your desktop. And of course, being Unified Inbox - it's available from any web enabled device, meaning your desktop just went mobile.

All authorised members of our team are able to Tweet.
Rather than give everyone the password to our Twitter account, we authorise access for team members from within Unified Inbox as appropriate.

Embedding links got easier.
Any member of our team prepares their Tweet – with URLs, where required and pastes it into the new Tweet window. Then one click on the “shorten links” button means that all URLs within the text are shortened.

Handling multiple Twitter accounts.
Your Unified Inbox account can connect to multiple Twitter accounts and you can assign access rights as needed. So individual team members can tweet directly from their inbox to the most appropriate twitter account.

Incorporating access for your team to your Twitter account is only one of the Social applications available in the Communicate package. You can trial one free month today and check out the other social applications available.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-08-23T11:29:00.001+12:00

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

You’ve got mail…and more mail. more
My Solution to E-mail Overload (or, How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About It!). more
Tech Blamed For Stressed "Gen Y" Drivers; Some Tips To Help. more - real life impact of overload.
Information overload. more - for a change of pace we're linking to a poem about the subject. Enjoy ;)
Managing Email Overload. more
Dealing with the email overload. more
Why Social Media Overload Means New Opportunities for Startups. more - a new term is coined: "choice overload"

Statistics

People see more than 34 billion bits of information per day – an equivalent of 2 books a day online. more
60% of employees polled believe that they don’t need to be in the office in order to be productive. more
3.5 billion pieces of content are shared each WEEK on Facebook. more

Wisdom

Lost time is never found again - Benjamin Franklin

How many applications is too many applications?

2011-08-22T09:41:00.001+12:00

The promise of Web 2.0 is that out there someone clever has designed an application that will solve every last little problem that you may encounter during your online life. Whether it's creating your blog, publicising it, making notes, keeping projects on the go or keeping uptodate with your friends - there is an application for it.

The downside of finding the perfect application for every job can be a spreadsheet with a multitude of login details. Now that's necessarily the worst of it - because there are applications that are built to hold this information.

Rather it's the sheer number of applications to open and monitor during a regular workday. It was working with this problem that set the Unified Inbox development team to thinking about how to incorporate the best of Web 2.0 into the heart of their unified inbox.

Over the coming weeks, Unified Inbox will be publishing information on the applications you can integrate into your inbox.

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-08-13T15:28:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure http://cot.ag/pJwlf2 - 20 minute video from much quoted expert
Email: Fail (A Confession and Manifesto) http://cot.ag/n8ScH4
Email Overload: Check your email later in the day http://cot.ag/oap2Aj
Why +MG Siegler is wrong about email (and right too) http://cot.ag/oql1E6 A detailed piece on steps taken to train a mailbox.
I’m Quitting Email http://cot.ag/mZ6rEn Would you say this is a valid solution to overload?

Statistics

57.4 % of respondents never turn off their phone. http://cot.ag/pjhvD0
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, some 20 million emails entered cyberspace. http://cot.ag/SActE
If email was a country, its 1.4 billion users would make it the largest in the world. http://cot.ag/SActE

Wisdom

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time - Abraham Lincoln
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once - Albert Einstein
The mere imparting of information is not education. - Carter G. Woodson

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-08-08T12:07:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips:

The Riskiest, Most Radical 30-Day Trial I’ve Ever Attempted? http://cot.ag/nouJly - no email for 30 days - will it work?
Are you an emailer? 4 wrong ways of defining the email overload problem. http://cot.ag/nOsOIx - new occupational code - emailer :)
How to separate your personal and professional lives online. http://cot.ag/pfZwZY - advice on achieving distance between work and home life.
Information Overload and What You Can Do About It. http://cot.ag/pDs2vQ - review of Jonathan Spira book and tips
Struggling With Information Overload. http://cot.ag/qMlcqA - how one author is finding ways to cope.

Statistics:

92% of adult US Internet users send or read email. http://cot.ag/opLyrW
Employee stress levels are increased when their inboxes grow by more than 50 messages a day. http://cot.ag/qIMuxG
23.8% of Asians use the internet compared with 78.3% of North Americans. http://cot.ag/oIUatD
Bloggers post 900,000 articles everyday, enough posts to fill the NYTimes for 19 years. http://cot.ag/oX8lyE

Wisdom:

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. - Gertrude Stein.
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. - Oscar Wilde
Where is all the knowledge we lost with information? - T. S. Eliot

Balancing information work with home life

2011-08-07T09:04:00.001+12:00

The Journal of Family Issues recently published results from the Finnish Use of Time database and asked the question: "Does Knowledge Work Require the Marginalization of Private Life?"

They concluded that knowledge work families especially experienced feelings of hurriedness and time famine.

It seems the advent of technology that allows for work to take place outside the office also allows for that work to take over family time.

We've seen statistics that support this statement:

76.7% of respondents read email and respond evenings and weekends.
33% of respondents said they check emails in the middle of the night.
39.9% saying: "I feel I ignore family or friends."

The Huffington Post article that two of these statistics came from, pushes the curation solution to information overload - that is: to get your information from one or two well-trusted sources who do the work of sorting through the multitude of information and present only what they believe to be relevant.

While that is one solution to keeping information overload from wrecking havoc with family time, others offer technology or media fasts as a way of re-connecting with their families. In a technology fast, family members refrain from using technology such as cellphones, tvs or computers for a pre-arranged period of time.

Reading many of the writings on these subjects we'd like to suggest that as with all technology advancements there is a period of re-settlement as we decide what boundaries are important and what changes are for the better, and for each individual to proactively find the solution that gives them the best balance of work and home life.

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-08-05T11:12:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips:

"How To Handle E-Mail Overload In 2011" http://cot.ag/n0m1oT Focus on using handheld devices for accessing email.
"My Solution to E-mail Overload (or, How You Can Scale a Mountain of E-mail and Live to Tell About It!)" http://cot.ag/o6gctf
"Could you go info-vegan? A diet for information overload" http://cot.ag/qVbyu1 A possible solution to issue of information overload.
"Does Inbox Zero help you manage your emails" http://cot.ag/nteOKx Detailed discussion of pros and cons of Inbox Zero approach.
"Managing information overload" http://cot.ag/qCuzlt Interesting article followed by 4 useful tips.
"How to Avoid Email Overload?" http://cot.ag/qIMuxG Five useful tips.

Statistics:

53% of employees would opt for a personal assistant rather than personal trainer. http://cot.ag/ofxvSe
As we go from grade school to high school, we learn only a billionth of what there is to learn. http://cot.ag/pvpy8G
44% of the worlds internet users are in Asia http://cot.ag/oIUatD

Wisdom:

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. - Mark Twain
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see. - Winston Churchill

62% of workers already work remotely.

2011-07-30T10:42:00.001+12:00

At my first workplace in a government department in the early nineties, there was a photo from the the 1930's of the office workers sitting in rows in a large room at their large desks. These men and their lives seemed so intriguing in comparison to the fast paced lives we were leading at the time.

It was likely a day of arriving at the office on the train, working with fountain pen, ink and paper, the tea lady coming around twice a day and a mailboy distributing letters and work to the desks. No phones, no computers - a completely different world.

The world of the typical information worker today has changed as much again. The figure of 62% of information workers working remotely does not mean they never come into the office (although that does apply to a percentage of them). Rather they work at multiple locations - in the office, in a meeting room, at an off-site meeting, in the car, at a coffee-shop or at home. With technology available today - all of these locations are available as places of work.

Where once, the physical space was a key linking tool for the team, it can now be technology that is the glue which links a team together.

The Unified Inbox team all work remotely, with our linking tool being Unified Inbox itself. Our conversations take place in the comments field of our work-items. These work-items can be emails, notes, project reminders, Twitter messages and Facebook messages.

This month we're looking for the best remote work story (could be unusual location, time, type of work). Tell us your story and go in to win a free three month Unified Inbox package.

Social Media in the workplace

2011-07-29T12:49:00.001+12:00

While many may think that social media in the work-place means employees losing hours maintaining their Farmville account, others point to the business benefits.

This week we read a short piece from Jane Hart on how employees can learn from social media while at work. Her background is Learning and Development which means her work can directly benefit businesses today.

She contends that work of the future will include a more self-directed and self-reliant approach to continuous learning as people do their jobs, and that social media plays a key role in this learning.

She breaks the opportunities into four areas:

improving productivity
finding and using content
joining and building networks and communities
creating and sharing content.

At Unified Inbox we too have found these areas to be crucial to our work. Unified Inbox was developed to allow us to take advantage of these opportunities and is the hub that brings these areas together for us.

JOB VACANCY

2011-07-28T10:24:00.001+12:00

At unifiedinbox.com, we're creating a true team inbox that captures all messages (be they email, Facebook, Twitter or others) in one place.

It's revolutionary - would you like to help?

Job Title - create your own, typically other companies would call this role a software engineer.

Work location - where you want. You have the chance to work in an dynamic international team, where the place you work from does not matter. Work from where you want and where you feel most productive.

Work hours - would you like a flexible schedule? Maybe you like working in the evenings, or maybe you're a morning person. The job of the future is not about location and schedule. All that matters is enthusiasm and results.

This job includes working with teams from India, New Zealand, Germany and UK - it's working with globally dispersed teams that is at the heart of Unified Inbox - so you'll have the opportunity to test your product every day of the week.

What we'd like from you:

Are you experienced in PHP/MySQL, CSS3, HTML5? Maybe you even worked with Dojo and Dojo Mobile?
We work with Agile processes, and Scrum iterations. Experience in working with these processes is not essential but you must be willing to take them to heart.
Fluent English is a must. It's mostly our teams 2nd language so we all have to be better than the translation software.

Our company offers different compensation methods, from fixed salary to performance incentives and company shares.

Apply by contacting us via https://unifiedinbox.com/contact.html, and we'll arrange for you send us a CV and samples of your works and explanations.

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-07-25T12:04:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Work Your Profit Margin http://cot.ag/ntgTDJ Advice for entrepreneurs including information management.
6 tips for managing remote workers http://cot.ag/p3nfjn Make information tools work for you, not against.
10 Tips for Easing Information Overload http://cot.ag/nxGVoA Tips from Jonathan Spira new book.
I'm Never Quitting Email http://cot.ag/pXwZBJ One persons thoughts on how they cope with email.
The secret to managing your email http://cot.ag/oqTKMa Useful list of email management techniques.
4 Reasons Why Email Overload Is Your Own Fault http://cot.ag/nYiiId Widely retweeted post.
4 Strategies to Avoid the Social Media Time Drain http://cot.ag/qPDL7j Quote: "social media is a seductive mistress."

Statistics

530 million internet users speak English, the 2nd most common language is Chinese with 444 million users http://cot.ag/rj3kVG
49% of managers believe the workplace is suffering from information overload. http://cot.ag/kQUwel
10 years ago, 8% of the worlds population used the internet, that figure is now 30% http://cot.ag/pp4Bch
1.8zb of info created in 2011. 1.8zb = 200 billion 120 min long HD movies. Would take 47 million yrs to watch. http://cot.ag/jJgn2o

Wisdom:

What you are doesn't age. - Michael Jeffreys
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. - William Shakespeare
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time -Theodore Roosevelt
A meditative mind is at ease because it's not trying to acquire anything. - Adyashanti

What is the future of the software economy?

2011-07-19T11:19:00.001+12:00

There are those amongst us who remember the days of punch cards. The days when the check-out operators at the supermarket had to read the sticky label on each item and punch it in the cash register. The days when you had to get up to turn your record over to hear the other side. And when phones could be moved as far as their cords allowed.

Why the sudden burst of nostalgia? - well we suggest that with current changes in technology usage, it will mean that one day you will talk about the time when all your files were stored on your computer - if you were away from it, you couldn't get them. That you physically commuted into your office with all your other office workers. And other changes that we can't actually see right now because we're too close to them to see that they may one day be different. And you will talk about all of them as nostagically as the punch cards

The key change taking place at the moment is the mainstreaming of cloud computing. Since 2006, companies have been steadily introducing more services to the world of cloud computing - "having secure access to all your applications and data from any network device".

Already we see changes where technology has allowed 62% of knowledge workers to work from multiple locations, meaning the days of being tied to one physical location or device are already behind us.

It is this world (or economy) that John Battelle is surveying when he writes Time for New Software Economy. He states that with the move to the cloud the economy has developed as "a fractured ecosystem lacking a strong economic and technological true north".

"On the web, we're wanting more robust solutions to problems that are only beginning to surface - I'd pay five bucks a month to someone if they'd solve my social presence problem, for example. .....

But for such a quality software ecosystem to unfold, we need, as developers, a clearer sense of a platform roadmap, and some certainty as to what portions of the economic pie are open for competition. ......

Isn't that what the web is supposed to be? Isn't that the promise of the cloud? .....

It is, but for that to work, all those platforms have to be willing to share data and APIs"

How long do you think it will take for a "new software economy" to develop? And specifically what changes need to happen first to develop this robust platform that Battalle talks about?

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-07-18T10:28:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

"10 tips to have the time of your life" http://cot.ag/oOgu4g How to handle "time-famine".
"We Have to Fix E-Mail" http://cot.ag/rrJC23 Some additions to the email charter.
"Email checklist (maybe this time it'll work!)" http://cot.ag/lIbvy0 Seth Godin's thoughts on how to handle email overload.
"Avoiding Email Overload After your Vacation, or Everyday" http://cot.ag/pWLOeY Start planning before you go away.
"How to Save Your Brain from Online Overload" http://cot.ag/q8LX4I 15 handy hints.
"4 tips to manage information overload" http://cot.ag/oEXFBr For those in the inforat race.
"Email Overload Expert Kicks Off I LOVE Email Campaign" http://cot.ag/r6323k 3 simple solutions are offered.
"How to Handle Email Overload" http://cot.ag/pTsPsi Good solid advice.
"Personal and Business email: separate but equal? http://cot.ag/pUnGU4 An issue more and more of us have to address.

Statistics

62% of the information workforce work from multiple locations. http://cot.ag/ofoAmy
Weekday edition of NY Times contains more info than average person would see in lifetime in 17th century UK. http://cot.ag/pOzkYu
Currently, at least 19.31 billion pages make up the entire World Wide Web. http://cot.ag/rjcPwb

Wisdom

Example is leadership. - Albert Schweitzer
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When nothing is sure, everything is possible. - Margaret Drabble.

USING UNIFIED INBOX - Training new team members

2011-07-11T09:59:00.001+12:00

Unified Inbox was developed to help team members who are spread out over different geographical locations manage the different communication streams they use in their day to day business. When we talk about communication streams we're talking email, Facebook and Twitter messages. In this blog series, we'll be looking at ways different users have used Unified Inbox in their businesses.

Training new team members

The Unified Inbox founders have recent experience in bringing on new team members and bringing them up to speed with Unified Inbox. In fact, they found Unified Inbox was the key tool that allowed them to do so without being physically present.

It's always tough when you're the "new" member in the team, especially when there is nobody sitting there next to you to help you out when you have questions on how certain things are done, where the person before you left off, whom to ask for permission, when and so on.

Over the last eight weeks, we've added new team members in China, Romania, Germany, India, New Zealand, the UK and the Philippines - while we ourselves were travelling between the countries. All of our new team members had to deal with the problems listed above but we've found that where they have access to Unified Inbox the induction process was that much easier on all of us.

Our new team members were able to quickly skim through the comments of previous team members, assigning messages with comments to colleagues worldwide and ask them their experience and feedback and finally, get our approval within seconds of sending an email or posting a message.

We cannot envision leading a global company across several verticals without the help of Unified Inbox. It has assisted our company leaders as much as ourselves in teaching and guiding each other and the people we work with on a daily basis, reducing the time it usually takes for somebody to be accepted in a team and be confident in what they are doing without even being physically present throughout the whole year.

The key features mentioned above are:

access to team inbox so full communications history is available as the new person starts
comments and assigning - Unified Inbox separates out the external message from the internal conversation - so at any time our people can assign a message, with a question to a colleague, safe in the knowledge that that the communication is safe and secure.
send after approval - when you have people who are still learning the ropes of a business, you can ask them to use the "send after approval" function on any emails they send out. This means they can do what they know how to do and allow you (or other supervisor) to check the work and comment on it before it goes out.

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-07-09T17:56:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips:

"Email overload and email charters - 9 Ps of email best practice". http://cot.ag/nEIb06 Advice from an expert in the field.
"3 Natural Ways To Fall Asleep Faster". http://cot.ag/lhzJdY Impact of information overload on sleep patterns.
"10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload". http://cot.ag/jTYYGb Handy list - focuses on "problem" of hyper- collaboration.
"Meetings Are Good and Other Unpopular Management Tips". http://cot.ag/iupXM0 Self-named "unpopular" solutions to information overload.
"Driving Adoption for Social Computing Technology: Kill Your Email". http://cot.ag/iLSiTJ Social Fridays anyone?
"Inbox Zero". http://cot.ag/lGMlkE In the absence of the Inbox Zero book, one bloggers list of what it should include.
"Inbox Zero is in the mind". http://cot.ag/kLFRdJ One man's experience with Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero concept.
"Become An Email Jedi In 7 Steps". http://cot.ag/jVmIRF Take that light sabre to your email!
"Email overload, WaterAid and email limits". http://cot.ag/myBKxR Combine your email efficiency with workplace activism.
"How to Dig Out: 8 Steps for Email Overload". http://cot.ag/m4XPtS Managing the vacation return.

Statistics

1.8 zettabytes of information will created in 2011 http://cot.ag/jJgn2o
Americans who check work email outside of regular business hours (43%) do so in order to ease their workload http://cot.ag/eu24en
The world's information is doubling every two years http://cot.ag/jJgn2o
62% of companies already allow employees to work remotely http://cot.ag/kQUwel

Wisdom

Wisdom: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity" - George S. Patton.
Wisdom: "It’s better to fight for something than against something" - unknown author.
Wisdom: "Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts" - buddhist quote.
Wisdom: "A thought is just an opinion about another thought" – Michael Jeffreys.

Email charters?

2011-07-04T12:12:00.001+12:00

If re-tweets are an indication of popularity then the email charter concept launched recently by TEDchris is very popular indeed. Today we take the time to look at this charter and its "10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral".

Given that this charter was developed in an environment where:

the typical corporate user sends and receives 110 messages daily.
almost one in five emails was copied unnecessarily to staff members other than the main recipient.
41.4% of respondents miss important news because of overload.
46.9% of respondents are unable to answer all email.
it takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30 second interruption.
reading and processing just 100 emails per day can occupy half a workers day.
information overload cost US economy $900 billion per year in lower productivity and throttled innovation.

(you can receive these statistics as we update them on our Twitter feed).

then you can see the need to create some mutually agreed upon guidelines for how we use the communication tools available to us!

The charter suggests 10 ways in which we can individually affect the volume of email and the impact it has on our intended recipient.

Respect Recipients' Time
Short or Slow is not Rude
Celebrate Clarity
Quash Open-Ended Questions
Slash Surplus cc's
Tighten the Thread
Attack Attachments
Give these Gifts: EOM (end of message) and NNTR (no need to respond)
Cut Contentless Responses
Disconnect!

Our suggestion - pick one of these items today and practice it in each email you send out this week. Pick another one next week and continue on this way to doing your part in keeping information overload at bay for yourself and the people you work with.

While doing this you may create a short signature line that lets your recipients know what you're doing and link to the charter. Let us know which of these points you found had the biggest impact on your workday.

Multi-tasking - another viewpoint

2011-06-27T12:10:00.001+12:00

We recently wrote a blog on whether multi-tasking was possible. We did so because more and more articles published recently point to research that shows the human brain is not that good at handling multiple tasks at once and that attempting to do so, means we handle each task more poorly than if we had attempted each by itself.

Cathy N. Davidson however has published a book entitled " Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn". In this book she puts forward an alternative slant on the concept of multi-tasking.

In her book she argues that the human brain is perfectly well-suited to the digital world, if only we are willing to rethink the classroom, the workplace, and how we measure success. In an article reviewing this book, she expands on the points made.

One of the areas she expands on is the "gorilla experiment". This study of how we pay attention sets up an experiment where people have to focus to complete the task. During the experiment a woman in a gorilla suit wanders into view. Many of the participants are so busy paying attention to their task that they fail to see the gorilla. This inability to see the gorilla is known as "attention blindness" and has implications that "the more focused, concentrated or specialized (i.e., expert) we are, the more we miss".

In specifically addressing multi-tasking she says

"we now know there is no such thing as monotasking on a neurological level. Neurons are always firing and the brain is constantly chattering to itself, calling upon different areas at once to respond in ways we are only now beginning to understand. .... When we say “multitasking is bad,” what we are really saying is that certain things are stressing us out and they are making us suddenly aware of behaviors that used to be so reflexive we didn’t even pay attention to them. We see the gorilla, as it were."

This alternative viewpoint gives educators and workplaces a lot to work with in terms of designing systems that allow for maximum productivity. Have you worked in an organisation that has attempted to utilise these insights?

Curated Series - Tips, Statistics and Wisdom

2011-06-25T17:13:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

5 Ways To Survive Your Inbox http://cot.ag/l53t0C
Inbox Management: The Healthcare Version http://cot.ag/if4QvF
Help Create an Email Charter! Houston, we have a problem http://cot.ag/kGgeGW
Reduce email overload by telling people how to work with you http://cot.ag/jAytK0
AGENDA: A collaborative solution to email overload http://cot.ag/kiLpgI
Email overload! http://cot.ag/jkD7VP
Information overload…are you waving or drowning? http://cot.ag/it5GcC
Are you overwhelmed or have information overload? http://cot.ag/iDY16G
Take Control of Your Inbox: 9 Ways to Sort Email http://cot.ag/mtmGBL
Maintain Your Mental Well-Being Harvard Business Review http://cot.ag/lNP8j4
Kaspersky: Delegation And Discipline Key To Controlling Information Overload http://cot.ag/kzrdUF
Tech Talk: How to effectively manage your e-mail http://cot.ag/jWS2qZ
Do We Have Too Many Filters, Or Not Enough? http://cot.ag/miWP9S

Statistics

27% of the respondents who checked work e-mail when off the job did so because it is expected of them http://cot.ag/eu24en
72% of the U.S. respondents — indicated that they check e-mail during their time off http://cot.ag/eu24en
It is estimated that here is a 64 second email recovery time, after processing each email. http://cot.ag/lyA7Xs
Respondents said they checked their email every five minutes. http://cot.ag/jy7ttl
Each second, the world’s email users send email the size of 16000 copies of the Complete Works of Shakespeare http://cot.ag/lipgXY

Wisdom

The best way to predict your future is to create it - Peter Drucker
When you throw dirt, you lose ground - Texan Proverb
Beware of a man of one book - English Proverb
To know the road ahead, ask those coming back - Chinese Proverb
Feelings are a rotten indicator of what's true. - Adyashanti
If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. - Zen proverb
Seek first to understand... there will always be time later for judgment. - Michael Jeffreys

What is content shifting?

2011-06-16T11:00:00.001+12:00

The phrase content shifting started being used this year to describe the desire to move content such as audio or video files between devices.

However when we look at the motivations behind this term, we see there are many more ways in which people will want to content shift.

Those that have occurred to us, in our workdays include:

I had a note in Evernote, but what to publish it in Facebook
I had an email but want to save that as a google docs file
I had an sms sent to me which is so funny I want to tweet it.

We believe that there will be an increasing demand from users to be able to more their content (notes, emails, meetings) from one application to another seamlessly.

Because of this belief we have content shifting in the long-term plan for Unified Inbox. So Unified Inbox becomes the one application (for either personal or team use) that allows you to take a piece of content and work with it in the most appropriate application. For example:

take an email and turn it into a milestone on a team project in a project planning app
grab a customer wallpost from your Facebook page and turn it into an action item for another team member
turn an sms into a meeting reminder

In your current workday, what content have you wanted or needed to shift between applications or devices? How easy or difficult was it?

Curated Series - Information Overload Tips, Stats and Wisdom

2011-06-13T11:58:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Two tips to avoid information overload on the internet. http://cot.ag/myKaC3
6 Powerful Practices for Coping with Information Overload. http://cot.ag/jAoWB4
Ex-Google CIO Shares Five Secrets Of His Success. http://cot.ag/kiyg0v
7 Steps to Dealing with Information Overload. http://cot.ag/l7dhOv
Generation Wired Goes To Work: 5 Tips for New Grads and 'Old' Bosses. http://cot.ag/mCDV1e
6 Secrets to Preventing Email Overload. http://cot.ag/jWlMcZ
Information Overload Awareness Day: 10 Ways to send 10% Fewer E-mail Messages. http://cot.ag/iRV9nx

Statistics

Almost 50 per cent of CEOs are dealing with information overload. http://cot.ag/mRolv9
59% of respondents had checked email from the bathroom. http://cot.ag/jy7ttl
80% of respondants had 50 or fewer unread messages in their inbox. http://cot.ag/mzIEUY
107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010. http://cot.ag/dXEoST

Wisdom

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become. - Zen Quote
Do not speak - unless it improves on silence. - Buddhist Saying
When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friend. - Japanese Proverb
Student says " I am very discouraged. What should I do?" Master says, "encourage others". Zen Proverb
Water and words... Easy to pour impossible to recover. Chinese Proverb
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. Leo Aikman

Is it time for time-out?

2011-06-09T14:42:00.001+12:00

How much time do you spend connected to the digital world and how much time do you spend processing the information acquired there?

At Unified Inbox we see a lot of articles on research into information overload and how it affects our daily work.

This recently published article looks at personal productivity from a different angle. The article reviews the TEDx presentation by Sydney-born anthropologist Genevieve Bell.

As the Director of Interactive Research and Experience Research at Intel in Portland, Oregon, she warns that the boredom many experienced during childhood has disappeared and it may have a profound effect on the brain.

"It's clear that we like to be stimulated, but our brain needs time to process the information," she said. "Boredom is quite important, it's a way of creating a space for creative thought."

The point Ms Bell makes is similar to that made about the importance of rest in an exercise programme. The rest time (or boredom) is the time in which improvements come.

Are the companies you work for acknowledging this? Or is it still considered an alternative theory?

Multi-tasking - is it possible?

2011-06-07T10:01:00.001+12:00

Many job ads today will specify "excellent multi-tasker required" and many people take pride in their seeming abilities to juggle multiple tasks at once.

Yet research clearly shows that trying to perform two tasks simultaneously not only takes longer but the results can contain a greater number of mistakes.

The reason for this is that the human brain creates a bottleneck whenever a "planning" task is required - it will restart and refocus on each task. This process takes time, meaning that trying to do two tasks simultaneously will take longer than trying to do them in sequence.

Additionally while juggling multiple tasks, people will often find their error rate higher than when focusing on one task.

Memory is also thought to be impaired while trying to handle multiple tasks, so if the task requires commitment to long-term memory it is best to focus solely on that task.

All of this means you will now come across more people who recommend that multi-tasking is left behind in the workplace. One alternative is practicing uni-tasking.

As the name suggests uni-tasking means performing one task at a time. The example often used is that of email. The advice being to process your inbox in several blocks throughout the day - rather than trying to respond to each message as it arrives.

It seems that focus could become the new multi-tasking aspirational job skill.

Curated Series - Information Overload Tips, Stats and Wisdom

2011-06-02T11:10:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Day 3 Inbox Zero. http://cot.ag/m1PxyA
Email Overload Fix: 3 Sentence Emails. http://cot.ag/lwAYXF
How To Clean Out Your Inbox Without Guilt. http://cot.ag/j74bAj
Email Etiquette – MIND THAT CAPS LOCK! http://cot.ag/k68QJD
6 Task List Hacks to Get More Done. http://cot.ag/jrEPat
Reducing Email Overload. http://cot.ag/lDH5KK
5 Tips for Managing Email Overload. http://cot.ag/mIIuEm
What to Do When Email Attacks. http://cot.ag/jc4SuV
Five methodologies to deal with email overload. http://cot.ag/lN4ueb
Overwhelmed Internet users choose to unplug — for a little while. http://cot.ag/j2QCWg
5 Tips for Managing Information Overload http://cot.ag/iQJzel
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload. http://cot.ag/hQFltN (a historical perspective)
Are You In Email Overload? http://cot.ag/k10Iq4
You can avoid email overload. http://cot.ag/jxvAwg
7 Reasons My Email Inbox Will NEVER Be Down To Zero http://cot.ag/kqXSWL

Statistics

It takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30 second interruption. http://cot.ag/k2nbd0
The number of e-mail messages sent is rising dramatically -- by some estimates, by more than 20% a year http://cot.ag/lEvfQx
62.5% wish they could filter out the flood of data. http://cot.ag/kDZ5rl
The use - and, particularly, the misuse - of email costs businesses up to $16,000 per employee per year. http://cot.ag/lcrruQ
Research shows that 70% of employees react to emails within 6 seconds of them arriving. http://cot.ag/jy7ttl
Worldwide, e-mails are expected to reach 507 billion per day by 2013. http://cot.ag/kEDwb4
Almost one in five emails was copied unnecessarily to staff members other than the main recipient. http://cot.ag/lcrruQ
41.4% of respondents miss important news because of overload. http://cot.ag/kDZ5rl
The average business executive spends two hours a day on e-mail. http://cot.ag/jJbI3v

Wisdom

Student says " I am very discouraged. What should I do?" Master says, "encourage others. - Zen Proverb
Water and words... Easy to pour impossible to recover. - Chinese Proverb
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. - Leo Aikman

How many email accounts are too many email accounts?

2011-05-30T10:55:00.001+12:00

The average internet user has almost 2 email addresses.

However as is always the case with averages, that figure encompass a large number of people with one address and a reasonable number with many addresses. For a humerous view on how many some have, view this cartoon published by PHD comics on the subject.

Commonly, multiple email addresses come into the category of “my work, my personal and my spam catcher”. (The spam catcher being the email address you give out when signing up with online forms and you're not sure of the use they will make of your email address).

Or another category of person using multiple addresses is the professional who has multiple business affiliations – for example a contractor who contributes work to several organisations can easily have email addresses at each of these businesses. One author talked of how every time he set up a new site for a volunteer organisation he acquired a new email address.

For those that have many addresses, the question is not so much "how many is too many" but rather how to manage them effectively.

How then to manage them? Logging in and checking multiple sites is a time waster and invariably means that some addresses get checked less often.

"“Managing multiple email accounts and constantly checking many accounts can be a hassle. I literally have to write down my user name and passwords for all the accounts just so I can keep up,”

Most people now with multiple addresses think in terms of directing them to a single inbox – a unified inbox. For those that think this simply means one inbox with a lot of poorly filtered messages, it's worth exploring what the world of filters is capable of.

The product you choose to manage these multiple addresses can make a major difference to your personal effectiveness. Unified Inbox is designed to increase personal effectiveness by allowing you to easily manage multiple email accounts, from one login anywhere in the world.

Curated Series - Information Overload Tips, Stats and Wisdom

2011-05-23T11:00:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Tip 38: How to Email Busy People. http://cot.ag/iO6Hal
Tip 37: Email overload - how to avoid it. http://cot.ag/jeh1ZK
Tip 36: 15 Tips for Accomplishing More in Less Time. http://cot.ag/kqjQ0u
Tip 35: The case for swinging changes to email practices. http://cot.ag/inrZgE
Tip 34: "How to avoid information overload in an accelerated world" http://cot.ag/jOJWTI
Tip 33: "Email Overload: 3 Simple Strategies To Declutter Your Inbox Now" http://cot.ag/j1TCbx
Tip 32: "Overcome Distractions: 6 Concentration Tips" http://cot.ag/kZCcgK
Tip 31: "Smart ways for dealing with information overload" http://cot.ag/kgr5w2
Tip 30: "How the World’s Most Famous Computer Scientist Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months" http://cot.ag/mGhI4e

Stats

Stats 13: 36 per cent of CIOs see email overload as a problem. http://cot.ag/jhX5P0
Stats 12: 46.9% of respondents unable to answer all email. http://cot.ag/kDZ5rl
Stats 11: 35% of knowledge workers suffer from health problems traceable back to information overload. http://cot.ag/kyBYe3
Stats 10: 33 percent of respondents said they check emails in the middle of the night. http://cot.ag/lNT2bY

Wisdom

Wisdom 11: "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." Buddha
Wisdom 10: "A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner". English proverb
Wisdom 9: "The future depends on what we do in the present." Mahatma Gandhi
Wisdom 8: "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Isaac Newton

Is email dead? - part 2

2011-05-20T11:03:00.001+12:00

In a recent post we asked why everyone seemed to be asking if email was dead. Many of the articles we were reading were claiming that email was dead, dusted and buried.

However the articles we reviewed in this post made the eloquent point that this death was prematurely announced and there were many ways in which email was still an essential part of modern life.

Even the drop in usage amongst younger generations - the sign according to some of the death of email - was explained in the following way "Only 11 per cent of American teenagers, ... now use email. Of course that's the case. They're kids. Wait until they have jobs and companies to run, or simply need to say something that's important and private."

In amongst all the doom and gloom - it's found that 87% of internet users check their email every day. There is nothing else that even comes close to that figure for online usage.

All things considered, the articles we reviewed found that "reports of email's death had been greatly exaggerated".

This week, we look at another 3 articles that focus on email usage in the modern day and age.

The focus of these articles is the impact of social media on email.

Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email
"I remember four or five years ago, people, myself included, were asking if social media was going to lead to the end of email as we know it. In an ironic twist of fate, it turns out that email is social media's secret weapon. And more and more social applications are leveraging the power of email to drive repeat usage and retention."

Implementing Social Media's Secret Weapon
"Every web app sends transactional email "

The Social Web Prays at Email's Altar
"Every so often a new technology comes along, promising to revolutionize the world of communications. And in the end, it prays at the altar of email. Despite being messy and unstructured, email, which will turn 50 in a couple of years, remains the hub of our Internet experience. "

Summary
With its notification systems, social media is one of the biggest drivers in email usage. Far from killing email, social media is ensuring that email is the cornerstone of the internet experience.

Why is everyone asking if email is dead?

2011-05-16T11:05:00.001+12:00

"reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" - Mark Twain

A quick google search reveals over 400 articles written on the topic of "Is email dead?" in just the last few months. Reading the top search results listed below reveals some common themes. What is your opinion on the death of email?

Is Email Dead? James Joyner ·
But email, which remains a comparatively private means of communication, is much more useful overall.

Is Email Dead? | Tech Savvy Agent
Even so, the question “Is email dead?” is rather simplistic. Of course it’s not dead. People still use email and they still sign up for e-newsletters and promotional emails. ... What’s the right question?

Is email dead? - British Airways Business Life. Business advice ...
Only 11 per cent of American teenagers, ... now use email. Of course that's the case. They're kids. Wait until they have jobs and companies to run, or simply need to say something that's important and private.

Marketing: Is Email Dead? Nick Crocker, Small Business Mentor
The statement "email is dead as a marketing tool" is too broad to really take seriously, so let's instead break it down into its components. Email is dead for:...Email is alive for:....

Is email dead
Email is so 20th century: Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan got together via email in the 1998 film 'You've Got Mail.' Now they would likely use Twitter ...

Email is dead. Long live……email? | InfoStreet's Small Business Blog
Email is still a marketing powerhouse, with 87 percent of Internet users checking their email daily in 2010.

Is Email Dead? : Retail Online Integration
Email is absolutely not dead! However, commoditized messaging is out. Consumers value and want to be communicated via relevant, intelligent and innovative emails.

Is Email Really in Danger Because of Social Media? | WebProNews
People might turn more and more to social networks for casual conversations, link sharing, and things like that, but call me when your banking and all your professional communicating are done through Facebook."

Twitter / Chris Smith: Is Email Dead?
Social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users

Curated Series - Information Overload Tips, Stats and Wisdom

2011-05-15T20:06:00.001+12:00

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating three Twitter series. If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

Tips for dealing with information and email overload
Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

Tip 19: "Your Inbox Is Full: Managing Email Overload" http://cot.ag/fFadcp Discussion of various approaches to managing problem.
Tip 20: "There is Hope! 7 Tips to Combat Social Media Information Overload" http://cot.ag/dHCrJm We like number 1.
Tip 21: "Email overload - Spring clean you inbox to save yourself time" http://cot.ag/kp7LD1 Advice to stop email piling up like dirty dishes
Tip 22: "Cut Down on Email Overload" http://cot.ag/jRmLGG Short yet sweet post, includes adding "no reply needed" to signature line.
Tip 23: "You can avoid email overload" http://cot.ag/jxvAwg 3 useful tips.
Tip 24: "Management advice: Coping with 'information overload" http://cot.ag/hX0xX8 including "don't overload other people".
Tip 25: "Don’t Suck at Email" http://cot.ag/jqVmVx We agree :)
Tip 26: "Inbox Zeroer" http://cot.ag/iVSOSi Innovative way of looking at the issues.
Tip 27: "10 Ways To Beat Email Overload" http://cot.ag/mPIOZN Cartoon included.
Tip 28: "Exercize your EQ with email" http://cot.ag/igCpyn
Tip 29: "Recovering from information overload" http://cot.ag/fofekE

Stats

Stats 1: 5.3 average hours per week lost by knowledge workers waiting for information. http://cot.ag/iNC5Dr
Stats 2: 294 billion email messages are sent every day. http://cot.ag/iBFZ9C
Stats 3: 90% of the total 294 billion emails sent daily are thought to be spam or viruses. http://cot.ag/iBFZ9C
Stats 4: there are 2.4 billion email accounts in existance. http://cot.ag/kh5Fii
Stats 5: the typical corporate user sends and receives 110 messages daily. http://cot.ag/kh5Fii
Stats 6: reading and processing just 100 emails per day can occupy half a workers day. http://cot.ag/k2nbd0
Stats 7: 48.5% of workers are connected to the web: "from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed" http://cot.ag/lNT2bY
Stats 8: information overload cost US economy $900 billion per year in lower productivity and throttled innovation. http://cot.ag/kyBYe3
Stats 9: 76.7% of respondents read email and respond evenings and weekends. http://cot.ag/kDZ5rl

Wisdom

Wisdom 1: "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." Benjamin Franklin.
Wisdom 2: "See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little." Pope John XXIII
Wisdom 3: "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough" Albert Einstein.
Wisdom 4: "Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress". Mahatma Gandhi
Wisdom 5: "Ever tried? Ever failed? No Matter, try again, fail again, fail better." Samuel Beckett.
Wisdom 6: "All things are difficult before they are easy." Thomas Fuller.

Why develop a Unified Inbox product?

2011-05-11T08:38:00.001+12:00

We started developing Unified Inbox because we were picturing a world where our team (we're running www.viva-lite.com and www.wellness-shop.com among other businesses) could manage all the different communication options they had available whilst being located all over the world. We're talking here about a true team inbox that captures all the message flows - from email to Twitter to Facebook.

We really wanted our team to be able to easily access, manage and use the information flow we had coming in and staying sane while doing so. If you've been following our blog on information overload – you'll know this is no easy feat!

The Unified Inbox available today is the result of months, even years of preparation and it's a product we use every day in our work. We trust that you'll also enjoy this sane way of managing ever-increasing volumes of messages and get the same productivity increases that we did.

And because we know you're interested in more than just a software solution to gaining control of this world of information deluge – we've also curating a Twitter series on how to manage information overload. You can follow it here.

If you're ready to trial a unified inbox solution that will allow your team to communicate where ever they are in the world today, then click here to get started for free.

What is the cost of Information Overload in your life?

2011-05-05T21:02:00.001+12:00

"Information overload is distracting many workers from their jobs."

So says, no less a person than the Chief Technology Officer at Cisco, Padmasree Warrior. In a recent interview she said "multiple streams of data from constant email, text messages, Facebook and Twitter updates are forcing companies and parents to grapple with the growing problem of a short attention span."

This growing degree of information overload can be seen as both a lifestyle issue and a key business concern.

Looking at its effect in the business world, figures published by Basex put the cost of information overload to US economy at "$900 billion per year in lower productivity and throttled innovation".

And many anecdotal articles are being published on the effect of overload on personal and family life.

"Sitting on a hotel-room bed, I looked up from my laptop computer and realized the four of us — me, my wife and our two sons — were all wired and happily oblivious of one another. I was pressing the refresh button on my MacBook for the millionth time to see if a line of thunderstorms on the National Weather Service radar had moved another 50 feet. My 4-year-old son was on a couch tapping random patterns on an iPad drum-kit app. Meanwhile, my 9-year-old son was scanning the Internet on his aunt’s iPad for the latest prices on NFL rookie cards. For her part, my wife was texting soccer scores on her smartphone to friends and family across Tennessee.

So much for good, old-fashioned togetherness."

The problems associated with growing amounts of information and email in our lives is one of the factors that led to the development of Unified Inbox. But not only have we created Unified Inbox (with the goal of stopping overload and starting living), we are also curating the Email/Information Overload Tips series which offers the best of practical advice for todays world.

We invite you to follow the tips or trial the product - all ways of reducing the cost of overload in our lives!

Information Overload - follow our Tips series on Twitter

2011-04-28T21:16:00.001+12:00

It seems somewhat ironic that there is an overload of information on the topic of information overload. So to play our part in making the subject manageable, we take the best advice we find and Tweet it via our Unified Inbox Twitter account. Please accept our invitation to follow us and keep up-to-date as we post new tweets in our Tips series.

Listed below are some of our more recent tweets. If you find one here that you'd like to share - then please click on the Tips link and re-tweet.

Tip 18: "Nagless Reminders — Get the Recipient to Respond On Time" http://cot.ag/gzRqRC Simple yet effective idea.

Tip 17: "10 Coaching Tips for Email Overload" http://cot.ag/f2Ysy 8 Check out tip number 3.

Tip 16: "Managers...Email Distraction" http://cot.ag/eAgh83 Our fav: what's the worst that will happen if you deleted it?

Tip 15: "Smart Email Management – from Holiday Inbox to Zero Inbox" http://cot.ag/ih9QcD Get that backlog sorted

Tip 14: Feeling Disorganized? Email Overload? http://cot.ag/hIEXqD Advice put into action.

Tip 13: "Email Overload – How To Battle It And Win" http://cot.ag/f7VN35 Focuses on planning time usage.

Tip 12: "All those tweets, apps, updates may drain brain" http://cot.ag/hrjTQ0 Indeed - something to watch out for.

Tip 11: "Email overload - using alternative communications options" http://cot.ag/fa5tYz What are the alternative options?

Tip 10: "Middle-aged brains and information overload" http://cot.ag/eyqnax Thank goodness! :)

Tip 9: "There is no such thing as email overload" http://cot.ag/h2MqLW An alternative viewpoint.

Tip 8: "How To Get Yourself Out From Huge Information Overload" http://cot.ag/iiuI4C

Tip 7: "Will the world end if you close Outlook?" http://cot.ag/dMyp1T Sound advice.

Tip 6: "Coping with 'information overload' http://cot.ag/hX0xX8 List of practical advice

Tip 5: "Email overload - unsubscribe to save yourself" http://cot.ag/g6NFq6.

Tip 4: "The Two Round Rule" http://cot.ag/ifVIoh Good solid advice for keeping email flood at bay.

Tip 3: "Information overload can kill family time" http://cot.ag/eRgxv4. Any family rules you want to share with us?

Tip 2: "Email Overload: The vacation return" http://cot.ag/gQIE67 Anyone else had it this easy?

Tip 1: "11 Tips for Dealing With Email Overload" http://bit.ly/f0fHMX Which work best?

In praise of assistants!

2011-04-21T10:42:00.001+12:00

"virtual or real"

April 27th is Administrative Professionals Day in New Zealand. On this day businesses are asked to value the support that administrators give.

While many thought that with the advent of technology assistants days would be numbered, it seems that with this changing technology came a flood of information and subsequently information overload. It could be said that senior business people now need information gatekeepers more than any time in the past.

(As an aside: the costs of information overload have been estimated at $997 billion in the United States.)

The big change however is that the assistant no longer needs to sit at a desk at the managers door. Technology means that an assistant can be anywhere in the world and still do the work required of them.

One of the popularists of virtual assistants is Tim Ferriss. In his book The 4-hour work week he says

“What if you never had to check e-mail again?

If you could hire someone else to be spend countless hours in your inbox instead of you?

This isn’t pure fantasy. For the last 12 months, I’ve experimented with removing myself from the inbox entirely by training other people to behave like me. Not to imitate me, but to think like me.”

You can read the his blog for the full article on his the ways in which he used virtual assistants as the method for removing information overload from his life.

Now, while Tim is seen as one of the most adventurous in terms of how much of his life and business he outsources (he once outsourced the process of getting a girlfriend to his virtual assistants), the ideas he puts forth are increasingly been taken up by entrepreneurs and business people around the world.

Much of this thinking was apparent to the founders of Unified Inbox when they started development. The assistants they worked with were in different countries and Unified Inbox had to be the tool that allowed these assistants to work closely on the business. For more information on how managers and assistants are using Unified Inbox see our showcase.

The way we work has shifted

2011-04-07T08:33:00.001+12:00

"Today's workforce can operate from virtually anywhere: at a company or home office, at a coffee shop or convention center, in the air or on the road"

A just published survey by Skype has some interesting figures about where work is currently taking place. For those that believe remote or tele-working is only a small part of the modern business world, the figures may surprise.

62% of businesses have remote workers. 34% of employees work away from the office

This insight has relevance in showing that a remote worker is not just one who works from home but one who works anywhere that is not the standard work-station.

in addition, 67% of businesses now allow workers to use their own technology in the office.

What then has changed that allows these dramatic shifts in the way we work? Cloud computing must surely be the big technology driver - as a worker may be anywhere, on any device to access their work information. The benefits exist for both workplace and worker.

For those that have experienced remote working (whether it be at home or elsewhere in the office) what do you consider the benefits to be?

Brain freeze - what it is and how to avoid it.

2011-04-05T14:23:00.001+12:00

“With too much information, people’s decisions make less and less sense.”

Newsweek magazine published an article recently that looked at the effect of attempting to absorb too much information.

The study created a problem that overtaxed people's decision making abilities. Participants considered an incredibly complex array of information in order to solve the problem set. As the information provided increased, even experts become anxious and mentally exhausted. In fact, the more information they try to absorb, the fewer of the desired items they got and the more they overpaid or made critical errors.

At the same time as the participants were attempting to solve the set problem, the researchers were scanning their brain activity. They found that as the information load increased, so did activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region behind the forehead that is responsible for decision making and control of emotions. However as the researchers gave the participants more and more information, activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex suddenly fell off, as if a circuit breaker had popped.

In effect - information overload or brain freeze - is a very real cognitive issue.

For Unified Inbox, we are looking at ways to make information more manageable and less prone to overload. Many of the smart services contained within Unified Inbox are aimed squarely at freeing people from the tyranny of an overwhelming message stream.

Inbox Management - "do unto others..."

2011-04-02T09:44:00.001+13:00

"...as you would have others do unto you."

When reading the literature on Inbox Management, you will find much of the focus is on how to manage the incoming stream of messages. But there is another way of looking at it.

What good email practices can you put in place that will decrease the volume of email in other peoples mailboxes?

It has been said the email begets email. A poorly thought out email which requires the recipient to send a reply to clarify what was said - has created a message in your inbox that needn't have been there. That extra moment of attention before you press send, could be several less minutes than required to fix a mis-understanding later.
How many people really need to be copied on that message? You are more likely to get a quality response from a personally directed email, than from a group email. Consider carefully the response you want from every person you address an email too. After-all they probably don't want their inboxes cluttered, anymore than you do.
Would a phone call or personal visit be a better option here? Sometimes (usually after the 2nd exchange of messages on the subject) you really just need to talk to the person. If only 7% of our communication is thought to be from the words we use, and you're finding that understanding is not taking place in email then it could be time to get that other 93% of communication involved.
Use a clear subject line. If you're being taught to scan your inbox looking for important emails, no doubt the people you send to are as well. Make it easy for them.

At Unified Inbox (click here for release information) we believe not only in using the best technology for the job but also in getting the best training on using those tools.

How close are you to your information "breaking point"

2011-03-31T18:52:00.001+13:00

In 2010, LexisNexis conducted an international study of white collar workers. They looked at their attitudes to and experiences of information in the workplace.

Of the findings that came out of this survey there are two we feel important to look at:

Half of white collar professionals say that if the amount of information they receive continues to increase, they will soon reach a breaking point where they cannot handle anymore.
Approximately one in two white collar professionals surveyed report feeling demoralized when they can't manage all the information that comes their way at work.

In looking at these findings, what caught our attention was the emotion behind them - "breaking point" and "demoralised" - which is the human cost of our information-rich world.

We know that when we designed Unified Inbox (click here for release information) we put a lot of thought into how to manage these increasing information flows, because to us, our work is what we love but sometimes we need a bit of technological help to keep it that way. We hope we can keep your work that way too!

Information Overload - where are we at?

2011-03-30T17:56:00.001+13:00

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]"Information is not knowledge"
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
James Gleick

Information overload was a term first popularized by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock. He put forth the case that information overload was similar to sensory overload and had similar effects - disorientation and lack of responsiveness. However he also went further in describing these effects - "when the individual is plunged into a fast and irregularly changing situation, or a novelty-loaded context ... his predictive accuracy plummets. He can no longer make the reasonably correct assessments on which rational behavior is dependent."

Yet even in April 2008,the New York Times reported that "E-MAIL has become the bane of some people's professional lives" due to information overload, yet "none of [the current wave of high-profile Internet startups focused on email] really eliminates the problem of e-mail overload because none helps us prepare replies".

It is this information overload that many of us appear to be fighting each day as more and more messaging addressed to us or relevant to us comes through our mailboxes. We're no longer just talking about emails but also Twitter (that mentions us or our business), Facebook (updates from our friends) and instant messaging and texting. All of these messaging options are looking for a piece of our attention.

It may not, however, all be the fault of the increasing volumes of information coming our way. In September of 2008 a presentation was given at the Web 2.0 Expo by Clay Shirky entitled "It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure". Some cognitive scientists and graphic designers have also emphasized the distinction between raw information and information in a form we can use in thinking. In this view, information overload may be better viewed as organization underload.

In his recently published book "The Information", James Gleick writes:

There are two keys to cope with the information flood: searching and filtering. Think about how many times you are having a conversation with a group of people, and the most interesting feature of the conversation is some dispute over something you can't quite remember. Now, any one of us has the power to pull out their iPhone and do a Google search—it's just a matter of who is going to be rude enough to do it first [laughs]. We are now like gods in our ability to search for and find information. But where we remain all too mortal is in our ability to process it, to make sense of it, and to filter and find the information we want.

All of this suggests:

the information wave is not going away or getting smaller
to manage this flood we need the support of the tools we use each day.

Unified Inbox (sign up here for release information) has at its heart the tools required to manage this information flood, to ensure that you can stop overload, and start living.

Information Overload - where are we at?

2011-03-30T17:55:00.001+13:00

"Information is not knowledge"
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
James Gleick

In his recently published book "The Information", James Gleick writes:

All of this suggests:

the information wave is not going away or getting smaller
to manage this flood we need the support of the tools we use each day.

Unified Inbox (sign up here for release information) has at its heart the tools required to manage this information flood, to ensure that you can stop overload, and start living.

And as we now flood the world with information, it becomes harder and harder to find meaning. That paradox is the final tension in my book

Inbox Zero - what do you think?

2011-03-28T12:53:00.001+13:00

"the psychological stress, however minor, of all those nagging things that may potentially require action sitting in your inbox can build up"

In a recent article entitled Open question: What's the point of inbox zero? the author (who admitted to over 10,000 emails in his inbox) asked for readers to say what they thought about the idea. We've published a selection below:

I usually try to get down to "inbox 10" every other week or so. I don't care about zero, but I care that the number is small enough that I can see it on one screen and know what is in there
I think there's some cognitive benefit - not seeing "914 Unread" in bold face upon log in subtracts some inherent dismay
Inbox zero everyday, and real time if possible
I don't follow any particular fad, but I do try to keep my inboxes empty -- if I leave a read message in an inbox, it's because the message is critical
I can say that those few times when it was down to zero I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. That, I believe, is ultimately what the concept is for - the psychological stress, however minor, of all those nagging things that may potentially require action sitting in your inbox can build up.
Inbox zero doesn't mean you read every email but you must act on
I strive for not only email zero, but twitter, IM, BBM, Voice Mail, and SMS zero. Not only to have zero waiting, but to have processed each message in some way
I keep all my mails in the inbox. They form a chronological record of (most) activities I undertake; and when it's time to change to a new e-mail system/account/new PC it's so much easer this way.
I have multiple filters in place so the only mail that makes it to my inbox is generally fairly important mail

We thought this was a great representation of the different ways people handle the volume of incoming email. It suggests to us that the system used has to be smart enough to handle different personality types and enable each of them not to feel that "dismay" on seeing a large amount of unprocessed work but also to handle the emails coming in an effective and efficient manner.

All of this thinking we've put into Unified Inbox. You can sign up for release information here.

Do you feel these comments accurately reflect your incoming message experience - or is there another way of looking at it?

Email overload - is it possible to defeat it?

2011-03-25T19:13:00.001+13:00

"e-chaos...costing us time and money"

So starts a recent article from the The Globe and Mail. The article entitled Beat e-chaos once and for all is part of a series on organizing your digital life.

We like the reference to the calculator that allows you to see calculate the value of these inefficient practices. Be warned - it adds up!

While this article tends to focus on good practice for filing and setting up automation to help you deal with volume, we think some of the best insights come in the comments section where people talk about the manner in which they work through their emails. The most important (in our opinion) being dealing with email in batches. It's the mental processing time to start working on emails that adds up during the day. Deal with that and you've gained yourself several sushi dinners! (see calculator reference above).

Unified Inbox (click here to sign-up for release information) includes many tools to help you get control of email overload - in order to stop overload and start living!