What would you do with an additional 15 minutes every day? Could improved techniques for managing electronic communications wisely add hours to your workweek, allowing a more sustainable, enjoyable life and provide time for innovation? Perhaps you might use that extra time to meet one of the Grand Challenges head on? Qualitative data collection and analysis techniques utilized in this mixed methods study show that having a purposefully developed, individualized email and task management strategy used consistently may have a positive outcome in attitudes concerning the use of email, suggesting that how we work can change our perspective of email. The qualitative techniques employed this study, including carefully crafted questions to elicit emotions and stories, revealed the gem in this study showing a connection between commitment to a management strategy and participant perspective of email. This study contributes by showing this link between the participants view of email aligned with management strategy, supports adding the “few filer” category of email folder management aligned with use of today’s improved search capabilities and shows no support for enactment of the illusive “one touch” model.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AllenD. (2008). Making it all work: Winning at the game of work and the business of life.: Penguin.
2.
BarleyS. R.MeyersonDebra E.GrodalStine. (2011). E-mail as a source and symbol of stress. Organization science22(4), 887-906. doi:10.1287/orsc
3.
BellottiV.DucheneautNicolasHowardMarkSmithIan. (2003). “Taking email to task: the design and evaluation of a task management centered email tool.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, ACM2003, pp. 345-352.
4.
BelskyS. (2010). Making ideas happen: Penguin Group.
5.
BennettS. (2014). Get It Done: Frm procrastination to creative genius in 15 minutes a day. Novato, California: New World Library.
6.
BergmanO.WhittakerSteve. (2016). The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff.: M.I.T. Press.
7.
DabbishL. A.KrautRobert E. (2006). Email overload at work: an analysis of factors associated with email strain. Paper presented at the in Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work.
8.
DavenportT. (2013). Thinking for a living: how to get better performances and results from knowledge workers. Harvard Business Press.
9.
DenningP. J. (1982). ACM president’s letter: electronic junk. Communications of the ACM, 25(3), 163-165. doi:10.1145/358453.358454
10.
DruckerP. (1959). Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New Post-Modern World, New York.
11.
DucheneautN.WattsLeon A. . (2005). in search of coherence: a review of e-mail research. Human–Computer Interaction, 20(1-2), 11-48.
12.
DucheneautN.BellottiVictoria. (2001). “E-mail as habitat: an exploration of embedded personal information management.” Interactions, 8(5), 30-38.
13.
FisherD.BrushA. J.GleaveE.SmithM. A. (2006). Revisiting Whittaker & Sidner’s “email overload” ten years later. Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, 1-59593-249-6, 309-312. doi:10.1145/1180875.1180922
14.
GuestG.BunceArwenJohnsonLaura. (2006). How Many Interviews Are Enough?: An Experiment with Data Saturation and Variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59-82. doi:10.1177/1525822x05279903
15.
GuptaA.ShardaRameshGreveRobert A. (2011). You’ve got email! Does it really matter to process emails now or later?Information Systems Frontiers13(5), 637-653. doi:10.1007/s10796-010-9242-4
GwizdkaJ.ChignellMark. (2004). “Individual differences and task-based user interface evaluation: A case study of pending tasks in email.” Interacting with computers, 16(4), 769-797. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2004.04.008
18.
HairM.RenaudK. V.RamsayJ. (2007). The influence of self-esteem and locus of control on perceived email-related stress. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(6), 2791-2803. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.005
19.
HammondN.JørgensenA.MacLeanAllanBarnardPhilLongJohn. (1983). “Design practice and interface usability: Evidence from interviews with designers.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 40-44.
20.
HanrahanB. V.Pérez-QuiñonesM. A. (2015). Lost in Email. 3981-3984. doi:10.1145/2702123.2702351
21.
JerejianA. C. M.ReidC.ReesC. S. (2013). The contribution of email volume, email management strategies and propensity to worry in predicting email stress among academics. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 991-996. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.037
22.
KanungoS.JainV. (2008). Modeling email use: a case of email system transition. System Dynamics Review, 24(3), 299-319. doi:10.1002/sdr.406
23.
KushlevK.DunnE. W. (2015). Checking email less frequently reduces stress. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, 220-228. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.005
24.
LarriveeB. (2009). Best practices for email management. Infonomics, Sep/Oct2009, p. 22.
25.
MackayW. E. (1998). “Diversity in the use of electronic mail: A preliminary inquiry.” ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)6(4), 380-397.
26.
ManderR.SalomonGittaWongYin Yin. (1992). A “pile” metaphor for supporting casual organization of information. I. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems(ACM, 1992.), pp. 627-634.
27.
NarangK.DumaisS. T.CraswellN.LieblingD.AiQ. (2017). Large-Scale Analysis of Email Search and Organizational Strategies. 215-223. doi:10.1145/3020165.3020175
PhillipsJ. G.ReddieL. (2007). Decisional style and self-reported Email use in the workplace. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(5), 2414-2428. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.03.016
SiuN.IversonLeeTangAnthony. (2006). Going with the flow: email awareness and task management. Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pp. 441-450.
32.
StephensD. O. (2007). Records management: making the transition from paper to electronic. ARMA International.
33.
SumeckiD.ChipuluM.OjiakoU. (2011). Email overload: Exploring the moderating role of the perception of email as a ‘business critical’ tool. International Journal of Information Management, 31(5), 407-414. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2010.12.008
34.
TakkinenJ.ShahmehriNahid. (1998). CAFE: A conceptual model for managing information in electronic mail. Paper presented at the In System Sciences, 1998., Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on, Hawaii.
35.
TaylorF. W. (1914). The principles of scientific management.: Harper.
36.
TracyS. J. (2012). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact.: John Wiley & Sons.
37.
VenoliaG. D.DabbishJ. J.CadizLauraGuptaAnoop. (2001). Supporting email workflow. Microsoft Research2088.
38.
WhittakerS. (2011). Personal information management: from information consumption to curation. Annual review of information science and technology, 45, 1.
39.
WhittakerS.BellottiVictoriaGwizdkaJacek. (2006). Email in personal information management. Communications of the ACM, 49(1), 68.
40.
WhittakerS.BellottiVictoriaMoodyPaul. (2005). Introduction to this special issue on revisiting and reinventing e-mail. Human-computer interaction, 20(1), 1-9.
41.
ZhangJ.Luciana DurantiD. (2015). Correspondence as a documentary form, its persistent representation, and email management, preservation, and access. Records Management Journal, 25(1), 78-95. doi:10.1108/rmj-03-2014-0015
