Five ways to beat message overload

You are likely overwhelmed with all the digital messages expecting your response. 

You have: Voice mail, email, direct messages from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., comments on your social media posts and text.  All of them demand your attention. 

Here's the rub: It's time consuming and highly unfiltered.  In the past, it was just phone and email.  Now, you have to login to three to ten places to 'make the rounds.'  In many situations, they don't offer ANY message filtering except blocking, etc.  That's a little draconian.  I'm fed up.  So here's what I'm doing about it, and it's working: 

1 - Setup Boundaries - Tell people how you like to be messaged.  @garyvee does this on Twitter, telling all of his followers that if they want to contact him, to do it via an email account, directed either to a business dev person or him.  He will not respond to any Twitter DMs because of the landslide of auto-direct messages he's receiving.   When you get alot of followers, your 'inbox' fills up exponentially.  That's the new way with me - Take it to my email.  I can filter it, file it and archive it that way, and besides, I can now include attachments, cc's, etc.  

NOTE for managers: Tell your people what your communication preferences are.  "Put it in an email, fit it into the preview pane," is a great way to streamline the tide of cc's, cya's and quick questions that your extended team fires at you.  

2 - Use filters and prioritize.  If you have them on email, you can use a robust solution (I use Entourage and hit the Junk button like Whack A Mole) to dump the junk and rank the gold.  Review your auto-filtered 'spams' on a monthly basis (scan quickly) to make sure no biz-ops are slipping through the cracks.  Setup a few priority filters: NOW, SOON, ACT.  Look at the NOW folder, along with your day's calendar, at the start of each work day. Read Inbox Detox for more on this. 

3 - Every single time you receive an email you didn't ask for, go to the bottom of it and unsubscribe. If someone in your social network sends you too many "I want" DMs or markety messages, give them one warning to stop, then unfollow/unfriend.  Of course, unfriending can be a severe response to Uncle Spam, but if you are clear in telling people to leave you off the list, he deserves to go.

4 - Break the thread with a phone call.  This is from my Email Training Program.  If you go back and fourth three times with someone on an issue, pick up the phone, you've got a problem.  The endless thread is less efficient with your time.  It's an illusion to think that 30 texts = one three minute phone call. 

5 - Push Back!  For the internal 'friendly fire' spammers that are killing you with noise, read my CLEAR SYSTEM post and cut the volume in half.  

 

Comments

[Gabriele Maidecchi]

I am experiencing this overload myself lately, so many places to be (or rather, that you *feel* you have to be on) and so few time to do it all.
All of these new ways of communicating are for sure potentially expanding our reach, but at what cost? I feel like sooner or later we'll reach a breaking point, so I might as well work hard to prevent it in first place, as you suggest.