email management

productivity

Email: The Variable Reinforcement Machine

How often do you check your email per day? Does checking your email make you more productive or less productive? Oh, sure, we delude ourselves into thinking we're being extra-productive by obsessively checking and responding to our email, but in reality we're attending too frequently to

By Jeff Atwood ·
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email

Is Email = Efail?

While I've always practiced reasonable email hygiene, for the last 6 months I've been in near-constant email bankruptcy mode. This concerns me. Yes, it's partly my fault for being a world champion procrastinator, but I'm not sure it's entirely my

By Jeff Atwood ·
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usability

Reducing User Interface Friction

Tantek elik recently wrote a great entry on cognitive load in user interface, comparing instant messaging and email: To instant message (IM) someone, you merely: 1. switch to your IM client 2. double click their name 3. type your message 4. press return To email someone, you have to: 1.

By Jeff Atwood ·
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productivity

Get Me The Laziest People Money Can Buy

Omar Shahine recently posted an inspiring ode to laziness: An email every few minutes and desktop alert + sound to go with it makes it to easy to lose focus on my task at hand and look at my inbox. While I loved this feature when Outlook came out, it’s

By Jeff Atwood ·
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