Inbox Clutter

I slip my Ray Bans on as I walk back to the office through the happy tourists and even more excited seagulls around Circular Quay. I’m not sure what exactly it is about seagulls that trouble me so much. I can easily imagine them working together to scout for venerable tourist targets. The battle wounded gull with the gammy leg would distract the unsuspecting holiday-maker while the gang leader with the jailhouse tats, cigarette on the go and pocket knife in hand, would rob them of their wallet, or hot chips. Joe Pesci’s character Tommy in Goodfellas could have been played by a seagull. I stride through the ominous gathering briskly.

I’m checking the numerous emails I’ve collected in the last couple hours as I walk. Invites to events, friends asking what I was up to last weekend or what plans I have for the one ahead, industry updates, and numerous messages actually related to my job thrown in amongst them. This means one thing to me, that my email filtering has once again broken down and I need to get the overworked I.T. propeller head, Matt, on the case. He is overworked mainly because everything he ‘fixes’ breaks again a week later. It may be our systems, as he claims, or it may be the fact that he is largely incompetent. Invest Co., in all its wisdom, sacked the I.T. genius that was Nick in a cost cutting measure. We saved $30,000 and replaced the intelligence of Steve Jobs with the brainpower of Steve-O.

There is so much email clutter sent to the average rat racer nowadays that how some people ever get any work done amongst it is astonishing. Go away for a few days out of Blackberry range and you need Bear Grills’ advice on how to survive in the jungle that has become of your inbox. There are a few simple rules to help avoid inbox annihilation. Many do not employ them as a distraction from work is exactly what they want. I am busy, and while happy to receive jokes and chatty emails, I prefer to deal with them when I have a moment to do so, not be alerted every 10 seconds that somebody thinks a video of someone falling off a skateboard is funny, and then receive the opinions of the other 30 people who were also copied in.

The rules I follow are thus. One, never use your work email address when signing up to anything other than work related things. You don’t want to start receiving emails about Ikea special offers every 20 minutes. Two, set-up filters. If you know you have overzealous friends, get all personal email filtered to a separate folder and away from your precious inbox, the same goes for things like ‘special offers’ from various industry associations and the numerous, and far too frequent, updates from organisations like Bloomberg and Morningstar. Three, stay on top of emails. If you don’t, they will get the better of you. And finally four, be ruthless and tell people to stop. If you’re mate Jimmy keeps emailing you his opinion on the weather then just ask him to give you his important assessment over the phone. I decide to put the Blackberry away rather than deal with the mess, and get Matt on the case when I get back to the office shortly.

Phone back in pocket, I try to enjoy my walk. I try, but my mind drifts back to Brian and Jono and I frantically begin to try to understand what’s happening. Both were acting oddly and I want to know why, preferably before my meeting with Brian later this afternoon to discuss the Manager’s role. I don’t like not knowing; I already tried talking to Tony and he wasn’t much help, so I need to think about how else I can crack this case, and the clock is ticking.