The headlines have flown in the last year as to whether our forty year love affair with email is coming to an end. Driving the calls for the end to email were those citing the cost to our lives and productivity. French company ATOS famously announced its plans to ban internal emails by 2014 and German company Volkswagen stopped the delivery of work emails after hours.

How to keep a clean inbox HBR management tip of the day for the 18th of May was focused on stopping email overload. Given the impact of email on our lives, this story seems one that likely caught the attention of most of their readers. Looking at their 3 tips, to me the one that seemed easier to say than do was “keep a clean inbox”. "It’s easier to handle incoming messages without clutter staring back at you. Create a new folder called "Old Inbox" and put all your messages in there. Then when new email comes in, sort it right away."

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact Person: Toby Ruckert (@tobyruckert) or Ursula Hoult (@ursulahoult)
Company Name: Unified Inbox
Telephone Number:  +1 408 490 3430 ext. 700
Email Address: ceo@unifiedinbox.com
Web site address: http://unifiedinbox.com
Twitter: @unifiedinbox
Press information: http://unifiedinbox.com/press.html

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.

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

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.

“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.

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.