Escaping the
Inbox
HOW TO STOP EMAIL PROLIFERATION AND INCREASE
COMPANY PRODUCTIVITY
A typical Sunday evening
question, after one week
of vacation:
how many
emails will I
have in my
inbox
tomorrow?
Answer:
about 525
Every office worker receives in
average 105 emails every day
More revealing data…
4
billion email accounts in 2013
 76%
personal
 24%
business
 Business
accounts generated
55% of traffic
In absolute values
100 billion emails are sent and
received everyday
(that’s 1 million per second )
And the number is
growing

Trend of email traffic
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
-2%
-4%
-6%
2013
2014
2015
Personal
2016
Business
2017
How email overload
affects productivity
 Separating
the wheat from the
chaff (inbox management)
 Archives
use a lot of IT
resources and are difficult to
manage
 Constant
interruptions
How did we get to this?
“Although email was originally
designed as a communications
application, it is now being used
for additional functions, that it was
not designed for, such as task
management and personal
archiving. We call this email
overload.”
Lotus Development Corporation, 1996
It’s not email’s fault
Email is:
direct & personal
Modern business needs:
collaboration & transparency
The solutions so far
 Inbox
management tools
 Email
management training
The problem with the old
solutions
The number of emails is simply too high
The better solution
Reducing the number of emails
The traffic trend we should see
0%
-2%
-4%
-6%
-8%
-10%
-12%
-14%
-16%
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
How?
1_By bringing email back to its
original purpose
2_By using cloud-based
technology to manage tasks
Email vs cloud
Email
Private
No control on inclusion in threads
Indexing is resource-consuming
Cloud task management tools
Transparent
Possibility to join or leave a
project
Indexing is a built-in feature
Difficult to keep track of past and
future steps
Clear outline of Who, What and
When
Hard to integrate with other tools
Easier to integrate
References:
"Email
Statistics Report." The Radicati Group. Ed. Sara Radicati. 1
May 2011. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. <http://www.radicati.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2011/05/Email-Statistics-Report-2011-2015Executive-Summary.pdf>
"Email Statistics Report." The Radicati Group. Ed. Sara Radicati.
2013. <http://www.radicati.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2013/04/Email-Statistics-Report-2013-2017Executive-Summary.pdf>.
T. Iqbal, Shamsi, and Eric Horvitz. "Disruption and Recovery of
Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions." Microsoft.
2007. <http://research.microsoft.com/enus/um/people/horvitz/chi_2007_iqbal_horvitz.pdf>.
J. Mark, Gloria, Stephen Voida, and Armand V. Cardello. "“A Pace
Not Dictated by Electrons”: An Empirical Study of Work Without
Email." University of California. School of Information and
Computer Science, 2012.
<http://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Research_files/CHI
2012.pdf>.
Whittaker, Steve, and Candace Sidner. "Email Overload: Exploring
Personal Information Management of Email." Lotus Development
Corporation. 1 Jan. 1996.
<https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~i385q/readings/Whittaker_Sidn
er-1996-Email.pdf>.