Louis Collins’ email policy

(as of October, 2011)

In an effort to increase productivity and efficiency I am beginning a new personal email policy. In the first 10 months of 2011, I received 17033 email messages that were not SPAM, mailing list email, or conference announcements. Given that I deal with email mostly during the week, this results in 85 emails per weekday from different individuals that require some action. While many emails just need to be filed, more than half require a response. Of these, half are relatively quick one-liners and the other half require 5–10 minutes of my time to craft a response. This results in huge time investment each day.

Given that I can’t delegate these responses to an army of administrative assistants, I’ve decided to try to re-take control of my schedule. I will now spend no more than 1 hour per day responding to email. I apologize in advance if I don’t respond to your email. Below is my current email policy:

  • I check my email only once each weekday.
  • Given the volume of email I receive, I cannot respond to all emails.
  • If I’ve not responded within a week, it is unlikely you will receive a response. This does not mean I don’t value your communication, but I am simply overwhelmed, and this is my coping mechanism.
  • Emails of less than 3 lines in length have a much better chance at getting a response.
  • A note to potential applicants.

I hope this new email management policy will result in improved communication with my collaborators with more focused & creative research on my part.

Best regards,

-Louis

(please note this policy is heavily inspired by Prof. Jeremy Cooperstock’s email policy.

(as of January, 2015)

Well, four years in and work continues. I’ve not held tightly to my policy, but it does seem to be working. The comments above still hold true.

(as of July, 2021)

This is still  working, so the policy continues.

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