It’s a typical Sunday evening – catching up on e-mails I missed since Friday when I left the office (I try to not access e-mails on Saturdays).  Technology sure has made our life easier (or at least different) – we no longer have to be in the office to catch up on work.  I make a weekly check of my spam and spam-suspects file.  It is amazing what I get (how does one get on such crazy lists???) and what gets ‘caught’ that should simply arrive safely in my inbox.  In a week, the number in spam reaches 200 – 500+.  Oh well, it takes seconds to clear out.  I do make the occasional attempt to unsubscribe to things that look safe to access.  Other strange e-mails – well it is safer to hit the permanent DELETE button.

How many e-mails do we get in a day?

According to Alec Beck (recent speaker at an HRPMN event) at Ford & Harrison, SHRM sends us a daily e-mail – 18 times/day.  Most of us have more than one e-mail address.  We have our work address; we also have our personal address.  We sign up for alerts, reminders, etc.  Family has to ‘cc’ us on everything (remember ‘cc’ stands for carbon copy).

Do people notice e-mails anymore?

E-mail was supposed to improve our lives.  Add this to voicemail at work and a separate voicemail on our cell (and one at home if we have a landline), and you have an amazing array of complexity in communicating.  We also text and tweet – and respond and/or forward accordingly.

Getting attention through communications

Is there a magic solution?  I talked with multiple people about this topic.  Just mentioning the title got a huge reaction.  Everyone feels overloaded – who can read 100+ pages of e-mails on a daily basis – and still get any work accomplished? There was no single solution.  The theme seemed to be that the less frequent the e-mails from a single source, the more likely someone is to notice the e-mail when it does arrive.  It isn’t a daily e-mail that seems to get attention.  If is the e-mail from someone you want to hear from that is only sent when there is value.  People also liked the idea of a warning – a voicemail alerting someone to a critical e-mail that will be coming.

If you have suggestions . . . .

. . . . . . e-mail me (yes – I did say e-mail me) at david@abelnmagy.com.  We’ll post your ideas on our Blog.