Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador
The Hamster Revolution
Book

The Hamster Revolution

Stop Info Glut – Reclaim Your Life

Mike Song, Vicki Halsey and Tim Burress
Berrett-Koehler, 2007
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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Well Structured

Recommendation

Taking a break from e-mail is tough because it pours in constantly. Many people tie themselves to their inboxes by carrying devices that keep them connected 24/7. They allow e-mail to interrupt their evening and weekend activities, upsetting family members and creating a lifestyle without any real breaks from work. Mike Song, Vicki Halsey and Tim Burress show you how to change your e-mail response and filing habits to recapture lost time and regain control of your life. The story of Harold, a human resources director, helps them make their points. Reading this book takes roughly 90 minutes, but it will have a long-term impact on your time management. getAbstract recommends it to businesses and teams who feel eternally bombarded with e-mail and want to fight information overload.

Summary

The E-Mail Calculation

Technology now enables you to leave the office confident that clients can reach you with voice, text or e-mail messages if problems arise. That’s the good news. However, the bad news is that work-related e-mail has invaded people’s precious time away from the office. Don’t let this kind of e-mail spillage become a fact of your work life. Adopt strategies to change your e-mail and information-management habits, and to stay on top of the constant deluge of information.

Though e-mail doesn’t require postage, it’s not without its costs. Say you receive 50 e-mail messages a day and send 25, for a total of 75 messages per day. Multiply the total by 260, the number of days you probably work in a year. Subtracting holidays and vacation time gives you 240. So, if you send and receive 75 messages every work day, you deal with 18,000 messages per year. That’s without counting the messages to which you respond after hours and on weekends. You may be spending as much as one-third of your time on e-mail.

Before you begin to reduce your information overload, write down two goals, one personal and one professional. For example, do you want to take up a...

About the Authors

Mike Song is the co-founder and CEO of a consultancy that advises companies about efficiency and e-mail etiquette; Tim Burress is another co-founder and president. Vicki Halsey is a motivational speaker and vice president of a firm that provides leadership advice to corporations.

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