Email Overload: The vacation return – dream or nightmare? Part 6

I went for a one week vacation recently and I was determined to test these Email Overload techniques by swearing not to check or process any email while I was away. Here are the stats of what I was faced with upon my return to office the first Monday morning back: (N.B. These stats only include my work email account.)

• Emails already sent to various folders using rules I created manually: 262
• Emails in my inbox: 173 (I had completely cleared my inbox before I left for vacation)

Total: 435 

• Spam in my inbox: 0 
  
• False Positives caught in my spam quarantine: 0 
• Email TODOs in my TODO folder before vacation: 9

My state of mind prior to processing: serene and calm (which is odd, as I generally rev high). Having done some quick processing before, I am now confident that I can get through the 173 emails in less than an hour.

My first instinct in the past would have been to dive into my email on the weekend prior to my return. Actually, that’s not entirely true; I probably would have been checking email throughout my vacation and profusely apologizing to my family. This time I chose to do neither, leaving it all to Monday morning. I even tempted fate a little more. Instead of hitting my Blackberry on my 45 minute train ride to the office, or diving straight into email when I got to the office, I chose to do my usual MBWA (Management By Wandering Around) and spent close to an hour talking to employees about stuff that happened at the office during my week on vacation. There is method to my MBWA, since employees who sent me important messages requiring action would likely follow-up during our informal chats.

The vital statistics after processing my email after my vacation return:

• Emails in my inbox: 0
• Email TODOs in my TODO folder after vacation: 9 (Oddly, the exact same number I had when I started. However, that is because I added a few and processed a few, for a net of zero.)
• Time spent clearing the 173 emails in my inbox: About 90 minutes (This includes the time I spent acting on the items that I deemed I could take care of in two minutes or less).
• Time spent clearing the 262 emails in other folders by rules: 33 minutes (recall, these are mostly newsletter items, FYIs, and such, and can be easily skimmed). It took me that long because I actually hit on an industry mailing list that had some interesting articles posted, maybe I should have set them to later TODOs to read them.

So not a bad tally overall, 435 emails processed in just over 2 hours. My inbox is back to zero and that feeling of satisfaction is back, which builds on top of the email serenity I already had. I spent most of the day handling TODOs (real work), talking with colleagues about issues, catching up on last week and preparing for this week (we have an all-hands meeting).

Is vacation return to email a dream or a nightmare for you? Please share your stories and ideas on how it might be improved.