Improving e-Productivity: dealing with "spam", "bacn" and other recurring emails

In my previous post I talked on the topic of Ideas on Improving e-Productivity Within Work Groups. Specifically I talked about email and our use of this “productivity tool”. I summarized my point of view with the following statement:

The key to email management is to break down your inbox into only those emails that you need to be looking at right now.

I explained that there are many strategies for achieving this purely within your own personal email management. For strategies on personal email management I recommend the Inbox Zero blog posts by Merlin Mann. However what I wanted to talk about was some strategies to use within your work group to help with making everyone more productive with email. I provided 5 ideas. In this post I want to expand on the first of these ideas.

Use rules/filters to block or redirect “spam” and “bacn”

I assume that everyone is familiar with the term “spam”, meaning unwanted solicitous email. But you may not realize that many spam blocking tools within email software can be improved with your input. If a spam message makes it way through to your inbox, don’t just delete it, but instead mark it as spam so that your email program can improve it’s ability to recognize and block that type of spam message.

Of course there is another type of email message that we all encounter, which has been coined “bacn” (similar to spam, but at least it's tasty!). This is email that you have signed up for but that you don’t want to look at with any urgency. For example I receive email from Air Canada Websaver. This isn’t spam because I signed up for this and I would like to keep receiving these in case I want to keep tabs on seat sales. But I don’t need to see this email as soon as it comes into my inbox. It distracts me in my workflow.

If it was just this email then maybe I could put up with it. But I get lots more "bacn" on a regular basis: web-letters, listserv emails, e-bills, etc.. Within this category I would also include regular announcements that get distributed to you from your various work groups, departments, professional associations, etc... And of course there are also those people who are the habitual "Forwarders" of interesting or humorous emails.

So what can you do? Most people either delete these emails without reading them, or they leave them in their inbox with the intention of returning to read them (but never get around to actually reading them). There is a better option. Use rules/filters to automatically move these emails from your inbox into a folder. Then you can schedule a time when it is convenient for you to read these various emails without having been interrupted by them when they first arrived

All email software (Outlook, Mail, etc..) and most online email (Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc..) have a rule or filter tools. This will allow you to create sets of criteria and accompanying actions that your email program will automatically process. Most “bacn” emails will have the same sender email address and/or title, so you can create a rule based on a consistent criteria. So for my previous example, here is what my filter looks like:

• criteria: any email with the title Air Canada Websaver
• action: move from inbox into Flyers & Announcements folder

For more help on creating rules/filters within your email program, I suggest you check the help menu within your email software or online account.

NOTE: University of Alberta webmail does not have filters enabled. Therefore to use rules/filters with your @ualberta.ca email, you need to set-up IMAP mail using an email software program such as Outlook, Mail, Entourage, etc… For information on how to do this I would suggest visiting the AICT helpdesk page on the topic, http://helpdesk.ualberta.ca/email

Rules and filters can drastically improve your productivity with your use of email. It will take some initial investment on your part, but will save you much more time and stress in the long term. However please use caution when first creating rules or filters. When you create a new rule or filters be sure to check that it is functioning as you expected. You don't want to be moving emails out of your inbox that you actually wanted to see right away. A little testing at the beginning will allow you to sit back and visit your inbox in the confident knowledge that your "bacn" emails are being removed from your immediate attention and yet saved for you for when you want to check on them.

Happy emailing!