Research-based approaches
to email & time management
Dr. Brad Mehlenbacher
Leadership, Policy &
Adult & Higher Education
NC State University
brad_m@unity.ncsu.edu
www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m
Higher education culture & rapid change
Collegial
Managerial
Entrepreneurial
Orientation to change
Leadership
Values
Decision-making
¥
¥
¥
¥
¥ Pragmatists
¥ Preservation
¥ Administrative
effic i ency
¥ Vertical, top-down
¥
¥
¥
¥
Support structures
Key messages
Communication strategies
¥ Program-driven
¥ Quality
¥ Internal
¥ Rule-focused
¥ Efficiency
¥ Vertical, formal
Systems and resources
¥ Duplicated according
to need
¥ Stick together
¥ Value not easily
recognized
¥ Specialized
¥ Stable, efficient, and
pre-organized
¥ DonΥ
t rock the boat
¥ Unnecessary
¥ Learner-focu s ed
¥ Market-driven
¥ External/internal,
horizontal, informal
¥ Evolving
neededΣ
¥ Seize the day
¥ Tightly controlled
Competition
¥ Stable, priority
programs
¥ Evolutionary
¥ Complement existing
programs
¥ Avoid competition
Strategies
¥ Improve quality
Faculty and staff values
¥ Independence
Rewards
¥ Individual
Key messages
Alliances
Organizational featu res
Budgets
Actions
New programs
Conservers
Stewardship
Faculty program
Restricted, shared
internal
¥ Segmented and vertical
¥ Targeted
¥ Fit existing structures
¥ Minimize competition
through regulation
¥ Improve efficiency
¥ Authority and
predictability
¥ Functional
Originators
Visionary
Client-oriented
Horizontal, shared with
stakeholders
¥ Sought out and
implemented
¥ Integrated and crossfunctional
¥ Fluid, opportunity
seeking
¥ Revolutionary
¥ Make new markets or
force new structures
¥ Exploit competitive
advantage
¥ Establish new market
¥ Collaboration
¥ Organizational
Work is informationintensive, customized,
rapid, flexible,
horizontal, integrated,
service oriented,
distributed, continuous,
consultative (Asaolu,
2005, p. 337)
“Access to education
from any location, at
any time, for any age,
and in many ways is
critical for individual
and collective wellbeing” (Hanna, 2003, p.
68)
Adopted from:
Asaolu, O. S. (2006). On the emergence of new computer technologies. Educational Technology and Society, 9(1), 335–343.
Hanna, D. E. (2003). Organizational models in higher education, past and future. In M. G. Moore & W. G. Anderson (Eds.),
Handbook of Distance Education (pp. 67-78). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Managing multiple work-learning worlds
Phase Transition: “The
controlling factor here is not
heat or energy but pure
connectivity”
“Night now, Daddy, you go
‘puter email” (Eleanor, 2 years
old)
“But where’s my email?!”
(Frances, 4 years old)
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Leisure
Learning
Work Learning
Higher
Learning
“Alienation from a natural milieu can be good for us and indeed is in
many ways essential for full human life. To live and to understand
fully, we need not only proximity but also distance….
Technologies are artificial, but — paradox again — artificiality is
natural to human beings. Technology, properly interiorized, does not
degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it”
Adopted from:
Gleick, J. (1999). Faster: The acceleration of just about everything. NY, NY: Pantheon Books.
Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. NY, NY: Methuen, pp. 82-83.
E-mail is pervasive & ubiquitous
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Email “has evolved beyond a
passive communication system”
(MacKay, 1989, p. 395)
Email “is woven into the general
system of coordinated activity”
(Wattenberg, 2005, p. 144)
74% of American adults use
Internet; 69% online daily
91% of them use e-mail
71% of workers regard email as
“essential” for their everyday work
(Whittaker, 2005, p. 49).
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Knowledge workers average
checking email 50 times/day,
instant messaging 77 times, and
visited over 40 websites
Email volume has doubled over
last 5 years, to 40B person-toperson emails everyday (IBM
Podcast, 2008)
Adopted from:
MacKay, W. E. (1989). Diversity in the use of electronic mail: A preliminary inquiry. ACM Transactions on Office Information
Systems, 6 (4), 380-397.
PEW Internet & American Project. (2009). Online Activities and Internet: The mainstreaming of online life. Available online:
http://www.pewinternet.org
Wattenberg, M., Rohall, S. L., Gruen, D., & Kerr, B. (2005). Email research: Targeting the enterprise. Human-Computer
Interaction, 20 (1/2), 139-162.
Whittaker, S. (2005). Supporting collaborative task management in email. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 49-88.
Balancing proximity & distance
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Contemporary conditions include
fragmentation, diminished attention,
interruptability, multitasking, dual processing,
polychronicity, information overload, pseudoattention deficit disorder (Lohr, 2007)
“Employees are said to spend about 50 to 90
minutes a day managing email” (Van Waes,
2003, p. 279).
How do I balance work with personal time,
research, instruction, and extension, access
with protected time, community interests with
individual priorities, service goals with self?
Adopted from:
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School P.
Lohr, S. (2007). Is information overload a $650 billion drag on the economy? New York Times, December 20. Available online:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/is-information -overload-a-650-billion-drag-on-theeconomy/?scp=1andsq=information+overload
Van Waes, L. (2003). Use and misuse of email. Document Design, 4 (3), 279-280.
Characterizing your e-mail use
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How many messages did you
send today?
How many messages did you
receive today?
Is this a typical day?
How many mail folders do you
have?
How many messages are in
your inbox?
Is this typical?
How many distribution lists do
you subscribe to?
How often do you read your
email?
Do you read all of your email?
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What percentage of
messages do you wish
you had never seen?
(MacKay, 1989, p. 396)
Do you keep reminders?
Do you keep an
electronic or hardcopy
calendar?
Do you keep a separate
to-do list(s)?
Can you identify
messages related to
most important work
tasks? (Whittaker, 2005).
Adopted from:
MacKay, W. E. (1989). Diversity in the use of electronic mail: A preliminary inquiry. ACM Transactions on Office Information
Systems, 6 (4), 380-397.
Whittaker, S. (2005). Supporting collaborative task management in email. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 49-88.
Making email your refrigerator
My refrigerator notes don’t:
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Require electricity, textual
literacy, computer knowledge
Allow strangers and spammers to
post messages
Invite hasty responses, accidental
postings, flames
Make co-authoring a note difficult
Organize themselves
chronologically
Hide the contents of new notes
Isolate communication exchange
and incidental viewing
Last forever and get re-circulated
out of context.
Adopted from:
PEW Internet & American Project. (2005). Online Activities and Internet: The mainstreaming of online life. Available online:
http://www.pewinternet.org
Anticipating the
email future
Sample analysis of email threads (p. 111):
Task view inbox as
calendar (p. 551):
Visualization role-manager
interface (HCIL):
Adopted from:
Bellotti, V., Ducheneaut, N., Howard, M., Smith, I., & Grinter, R. E. (2005). Quality versus quantity: Email-centric task
management and its relation with overload. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 89-138.
Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland. Available online:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pubs/screenshots/Role-manager.shtml Gwizdka, J. (2002). Reinventing the inbox — Supporting
the management of pending tasks in e-mail. Proceedings of CHI 2002 Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 550-551.
Understanding the limitations of email
Problems:
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Reminders of
appointments and to-dos
Other time-based
information
Group uses
A record of past activities
Portability
Ready accessibility
Visual salience in the work
setting
Fluidity of visual structure
Local versus global view
Scarring
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Prioritizing intentions
Expressiveness of
technologies
Explicit and implicit
information
Event series
Typographic
Not face-to-face
communication
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“E-mail is an evolving sociotechnical
phenomenon” (Ducheneaut & Watts,
2005, p. 12)
Adopted from:
Blandford, A. E., & Green, T. R. G. (2001). Group and individual time management tools: What you get is not what you need.
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 5 (4), 213-230.
Ducheneaut, N., & Watts, L. A. (2005). In search of coherence: A review of email research. Human-Computer Interaction, 20
(1/2), 11-48.
Working with email strategically
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Identify essential information
Produce accurate, brief, clear
messages
Consider alternative media
Keep relevant content at hand
Preserve the ongoing work-state
of incomplete activities
Save content that might be
needed again in the future
Find things in the overwhelming
and generally growing mass of
content
Prioritize the “must-do’s” against
the “would-be-nice-to-do’s”
Get rid of irrelevant content
(Bellotti, et al. (2005, p. 101).
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Minimize copying (consider
audience, purpose, goals)
Organize according to
priorities: from direct report,
messages to you, to you and
others, and copied to you
Streamline workflow.
Adopted from:
Bellotti, V., Ducheneaut, N., Howard, M., Smith, I., & Grinter, R. E. (2005). Quality versus quantity: Email-centric task
management and its relation with overload. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 89-138.
Employing simple email tactics
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Regularly scanning the inbox; often scrolling up and down
Turning off ping; avoiding dependence on constant email updates
Learning keystroke shortcuts and exploring your email application
Sorting, by sender, flags, other prioritizing systems, to find items
more easily than in the default time-and-date-based view
Deleting items to clean-out irrelevant, distracting content in the inbox
Storing currently relevant items in task application
Marking email messages as unread (or critical or important, etc.)
Storing items in appropriately labeled email folders and subfolders to
be worked on together in the future
Archiving messages in email folders for reference
Inspecting or searching in folders in email and using other technical
or nontechnical methods of keeping work prioritized
Making a calendar event to remind oneself to do something (Bellotti,
et al., 2005, p. 102).
Adopted from:
Bellotti, V., Ducheneaut, N., Howard, M., Smith, I., & Grinter, R. E. (2005). Quality versus quantity: Email-centric task
management and its relation with overload. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 89-138.
Remembering netoric, not netiquette
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Remember the human, that is, your
audience, their time constraints, work
patterns, communication styles,
organizational habits
Set high-level priorities for your work
and personal life
Adhere to the same standards of
behavior online that you follow in real life
Know where you are in cyberspace and
for how long and what purposes
Respect other people’s time and
bandwidth
Make yourself look good online
Share expert knowledge
Help keep flame wars under control
(reflect)
Respect other people’s privacy
Don’t abuse your power
Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes
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“The digital medium is not a
neutral conduit any more
than print was…. The
rhetoric of digital
expression is already in
use across academic life, at
least in embryo, and its
implications are clear
enough and profound” (pp.
175-176)
Adopted from:
Albion.com, & Ross, S. T. (2004). Netiquette. Available online: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html
Lanham, R. A. (2002). The audit of virtuality: Universities in the attention economy. In S. Brint (Ed.), The future of the city of
intellect: The changing American university (pp. 159-180). Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Internalizing netoric
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“The proportion of us who
say we ‘always feel rushed’
jumped by more than half
between the mid-1960s and
the mid-1990s” (Putnam,
2000, p. 189)
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Knowledge work is
creative, entrepreneurial,
holistic, multidisciplinary,
global, interpersonal,
relational, self-directed, and
flexible (Felder, 2006, p. 96)
Adopted from:
Felder, R. M. (2006). A whole new mind for a flat world. Chemical Engineering Education, 40(2), 96–97.
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.