this white paper is worthless...

Posted by: on May 27, 2002 10:55 AM

 

Indeed

Posted by: Rikard Linde on May 27, 2002 12:49 PM

 

Agreed. Don't waste your time.

Awaiting an apology from John Rhodes...

Posted by: Ron Zeno on May 27, 2002 01:27 PM

 

If you have time to read a 35 page report, you don't have the problem of receiving too much e-mail.

Posted by: on May 27, 2002 01:59 PM

 

1. Sometimes I just post news. In general, I don't agree or disagree with it unless I explicitly say so. In this case, I read the report and was not moved in any direction. I liked the idea of filters (but that is old news) and I liked the idea of keeping your inbox empty (also old news).

2. Reader reaction is interesting so far. People seem to think that the paper is worth less because Mark Hurst is asking for $10 for it and because it is over 30 pages long. Is that true? If not, why do you think the paper is worthless?

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on May 27, 2002 02:19 PM

 

I'm not going to bother giving some guy my e-mail address just to read a long report that presents no promise for telling me something I don't already know.

If the guy has something groundbreaking, shocking or unusual to say, he should say it up front. Take a page from Jakob Marketing 101.

Title the report, "E-mail: 99% Bad."

Posted by: on May 27, 2002 06:39 PM

 

"It may be controversial, but this report boldly asserts that users can and should be ultimately responsible for managing their own e-mail."

Oh my! Guess I'll have to stop paying that college kid $5.12 per hour to do it for me, eh?

More gems:

"The correct way to measure e-mail load is by the message count, or the number of e-mails currently sitting in the Inbox."

Who would've guessed? I was counting the number of bananas growing in my backyard!

Actually, number by itself is not a complete measure. For example, I'm subscribed to 13 e-mail discussion lists, some of them in digest mode. One digest can be 50K+, which is about 5-10 minutes of reading. A "Hi, how are you?" message from my brother is about 1K, which is about 30 seconds of reading. A newsletter from a news site is also different.

"Keep the inbox empty".

This does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. The real problem with many people (I get several hundred messages in a day) is finding the *time* to clear out the inbox. So I do a triage, and read personally addressed mail first (one of my filters highlights any message with my name in it), then evolt.org admin stuff, then mailing list mail, then newsletters, then spam. Usually, some newsletters have to get the axe.

"Especially large inboxes are more likely to crash, losing all contents."

I've been using Eudora for 8 years, and this has never happened to me. Depends on the mail client. One of my friends, Rudy, a SQL god, has over 400 MB of email in his Outlook Express client.

"One might correctly argue that Microsoft
Outlook’s calendar, todo list, and address book are inadequate tools."

And why would one argue that? I've found them to be quite adequate. Unsubstantiated claim.

"Open each message, from top to bottom of the inbox, engage it — that is,
take some action — then delete it from the inbox."

Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Some messages can have short replies, but others might need more research. If I'm short on time at that moment, I probably can't reply to it until later.

"Use the “two-minute rule” for to-dos: if it takes two minutes or less to
complete, do it immediately (even if it means physically getting up from your chair),
and then delete the e-mail."

And if you're a programmer trying to get a program module working right, interrupting yourself for even one minute can throw you out of the "zone" completely, and cause several minutes of wasted productivity. Or if you're writing a business report, an article, or hacking HTML markup, or... any of several tasks that require concentration.

And lastly, we have a long tutorial on creating spam filters, which is useful. Some enterprising spammers have caught on to this, and instead use more innocent subject lines like "hi", and "about your message", "Can we meet?", "that info you wanted", etc.

Next, we move on to...

Danger, Will Robinson! We have altered course. We are no longer talking about managing email. Instead, we're going to spend two pages bashing Microsoft Outlook for its flaws. What does it have to do with spending less time on email? Who knows?

Mind you, I'm not saying Outlook is without flaws, but doing an interface critique in a PDF file about managing email effectively, aimed at average users (who don't understand interface design), is a misdirected effort.

There, I'm done. :)

Posted by: MadMan on May 28, 2002 01:37 AM

 

Now that I have read MadMan's summary and comments, I don't have to read the report. Thank you, MadMan!

Posted by: jl on May 28, 2002 11:02 AM

 

I donate my time so you don't have to waste yours. :)

You're quite welcome. Who in his right mind would ask for $10 for that?

Posted by: MadMan on May 28, 2002 02:20 PM

 

I was going to say alot but looks like MadMan has said it all! ;o))

Posted by: Berna on May 28, 2002 02:45 PM