If you received only e-mails that directly related to your core work, would you have enough time most days to resolve the issues contained in those e-mail messages?
According to Joseph Feller, Senior Lecturer of Business Information Systems, University College Cork, addresses the phenomenon of information overload and email, "the majority of respondents say that if all their e-mail was on topic, they'd have time not just to process the messages but to resolve the issues raised by them We can't control what comes into our inbox. We can control what stays there. For every incoming piece of mail, the most important thing we can do is to make that information actionable and to move it to other places in the system (like the delete folder, an archive, a calendar appointment, or a to-do list.)"
*Excerpted from "Personal Productivity and IT: The Never-Ending Love-Hate Relationship" Cutter Benchmark Review , Vol. 9, No. 7.