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A good time to declare email bankcruptcy

Email bankruptcy is a good way to reduce the post holiday email overload. Here are some reason why you should declare email bankruptcy and how to do it politely.

Now that we play with our smart phones and associated devices more than we sleep it seems to me that this might be one reason why many are in desperate need of recharging their batteries properly.  Will you disconnect on your holiday and take a proper break?  Is the fear of returning to the holiday email backlog too worrying?

One way to over come this most debilitating illnesses of 21st century business life is to declare email bankruptcy, delete them all and wait for someone to re-contact you about anything either urgent or important.  Mesmo Consultancy’s research shows that at least just under half (46%) of the emails we receive are unnecessary. During the holiday period you can be sure that of the remaining half, at least half are past their sell-by date and about a quarter will be cc’d emails with long threads which you will read and be non the wiser.

Tell colleagues that you have declared email bankruptcy and to re-send anything they think you should see.  Indeed this is what many savvy executives put in their Out of Office message.  The result, just a few key emails and an otherwise empty inbox.

This is a summary of a longer post which appeared on the HuffingtonPost.com

Tags: email backlog, Email Bankruptcy, empty inbox, holiday email overload, Mesmo Consultancy

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