Woah there cowboy, you've got information overload!

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Ok I have waaaaay too much information coming at me in every direction. I need to cut back on my information addiction... I went to "Informatics Anonymous" last week (saw my boss and Matt there) and got the following things of my chest:

  • I'm subscribed to 30 internal email distribution lists - ranging from Vista to SQL Server to Windows Live.
  • I receive approximately 400 emails a day from internal email distribution lists - I read the important distribution lists when I have time - I normally just delete the others.
  • I receive about 10 items of spam in my inbox per day, the usual stuff - I forward the funniest on to Matt as "Spam of the Day" - he appreciates it because he never gets spam.
  • I receive about 200 items of spam per day which are caught by Outlook's spam filter and put in the junk email folder (one of the problems with having a high profile email address at Microsoft - james@microsoft.com!!) - I empty the folder whenever the Exchange tells me I am over my space limit on the server - there's normally about 5000 emails or so when it gets to this stage.
  • I receive on average 2 emails per day thanking me for creating an account with online websites (people use my email address to signup to websites so they don't receive the spam from the accounts. Another problem with having a high profile email address at Microsoft - james@microsoft.com) These emails get deleted.
  • I receive on average approximately 50 emails a day in my inbox which are intended for me - working up through unread items from the oldest to the newest I choose to act, delete, delegate or defer (I give it a flag which creates a task in Outlook)
  • I subscribe to 54 RSS Feeds which produce on average 200 posts per day - I scan read the most important ones every day

Oh yeah, and I have a nine to five job.

When I tell people about my spam problem, they say why don't you get another email address? Are you kidding? james@microsoft..com - it's great - Outlook catches 99% of it anyway so I don't see it.

So. I'm cutting back. Forget work-life balance, first I need a info-life balance.

I'm going on an information diet. Let's see how I do.