KnowledgeForward

Today’s blog entry is from a comment I posted in Stowe Boyd’s blog where he poo-poo’ed the idea of information overload as a legitimate problem. I guess it’s summed up in the title of his post “Overload, Schmoverload: The Myth Of Personal Productivity“. Unfortunately his blog template seems to clip long link names, so here they are in full.

There’s no “right” answer in the debate between those that believe information overload will soon cause the heads of information workers will begin to pop like popcorn as they slump over in their fuzzy cubicles and those that believe we’re just adapting to the new flow.  I toggle back and forth between both points of view myself depending on what I’m facing at that time. 

What I propose is a focus on attention management (specifically what I’ve been writing about as enterprise attention management) that focuses on how enterprises can help information workers to pull the important messages forward and push the less important messages back.  Whether you see information overload as a crisis or just one more thing people are adapting to, improving efficiency is something everyone should be able to get behind.  I blogged about this at http://knowledgeforward.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/a-manifesto-free-definition-of-attention-management/.

And I fully agree with what I have called closed-loop analysis and you term as network productivity.  For those who learned not to be selfish in kindergarden, what is important is the value of interruptions to everyone in the loop as a whole, not just you.  If a 5 minute interruption of you for clarification saves me a day of work, you’d be a jerk to say no. I just posted a set of interruption patterns to try to clarify the good-and-bad nature of interruptions and the need to look at the closed-loop at http://ccsblog.burtongroup.com/collaboration_and_content/2008/06/interruption-mo.html.

I struck a blow against interruptions today by finally getting around to turning off e-mail alerts (also called “toasts”) in my Outlook e-mail client.  In my presentations on Enterprise Attention Management I describe how people will take action only when the cost of action (figuring out the software or getting new software) exceeds the cost of inaction (the annoyance factor).  Well, with e-mail alerts it finally hit that point for me. The number of times it distracted me has been far greater than the number of times it served its purpose by interrupting me to let me know something important had arrived.  So I decided it was time to hold the toasts.

Here’s how you do it in Outlook 2007:

I won’t detail instructions for other e-mail systems, but for those that have alerting, most of them have a way to turn it off.  For web-based e-mail it’s often in your IM client.  For example, with gmail the app itself it web-based, but if you use the Google Talk client it also pops up alerts by default.  You can turn those off by going to Settings, Notifications, and clicking off the checkbox for “Show notification” under “New email”.

Now if a co-worker’s e-mail sends me off on a wild goose chase it will still disrupt my day, but at least it won’t interrupt my train of thought since it will wait patiently until I check my e-mail before annoying me.  E-mail will always be a distraction, but it doesn’t have to be an interruption. 

In “Avatars Teleport Away From Second Life”, Don Clark of the WSJ’s “Business Technology” blog described how an experiment to teleport an avatar out of Second Life into another world (based on an IBM implementation of the open source OpenSimulator project) was successful.  It’s worth noting that this was from one test grid to another and only involved the avatar, not any items, script, or currency.

To me, this is a nice stunt.  It gets attention for its sci-fi undertones, but doesn’t address the real barriers to mobility in virtual worlds, nor does it do much to address disgruntled Second Life residents.  From a technical point of view, if someone knows the data structures that define an avatar in Second Life, and knows the same structures in OpenSim (which is open source and publicly available), it should just be a relatively simple matter of programming to enact a transformation, transmission, create (on OpenSim), and delete (in Second Life).  That also assumes the two structures are compatible, which they apparently aren’t entirely since clothing doesn’t transfer (The Terminator got it right 25 years in advance!).

Clearly the problem to be solved is not technological.  It is a morass of issues such as:

• Legal: How can intellectual property be protected when it can be infinitely copied and transferred (like with unprotected digital music and movies)?
• Business: Does openness or proprietary lock-in provide a better business model?
• Economic: If worlds have different ease and cost of content creation and pricing, how will virtual arbitrage impact the fortunes of residents and the business models of the content creators?
• Design and development: If each world has to support a lowest common denominator for items and avatars, how will metaverses differentiate themselves and incrementally improve?

These issues can all be addressed over time.  For example, maybe the business issues can be handled by charging a fee to travel from one metaverse to the other, just like flying from Chicago to Salt Lake City (two very different worlds) today cost me $600.

For residents of Second Life who are developing content they want to protect and extend, the philosophical issues don’t matter.  What matters is whether Linden Lab will push this forward.  According to the company, “Linden Lab sees interoperability as essential for virtual worlds to reach their full potential.” But about when this will be possible for regular residents they say “We don’t know exactly. We’re working toward that goal but we’re still very much in the experimental phase.”

Clearly the “virtual movers” scenario I depicted in my Enterprise3 conference presentation on Enterprise Virtual worlds (see slide below) is still too far off.

Note: This is a (belated) cross-posting from the Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

I’m sure by now you’ve seen the widely distributed story about the ABC writers asking for overtime pay for checking their Blackberries.  The New York Times quotes Lowell Peterson, the executive director of the East Coast guild, as saying “the guild is trying to avoid ‘the 24/7 workplace.’” 

Is that up to the guild? Is that even possible?

As options for virtual communication and collaboration increase and mobile/wireless technology improves, it is inevitable that work/life boundaries will continue to be blurred.  As that happens, the question of how much work an employer can expect from an employee (and where and when it takes place) takes a Web 2.0 twist. 

To me, it depends on whether your work is judged on time or deliverables.  If you work the counter at a fast food chain, you are judged on time spent working, not burgers served up.  This sort of transactional work can be more optimized since it is a repeatable process, so there is less flexibility in how and when it gets done. 

If your work is judged on deliverables, such as working code or a TV script turned in by a deadline, there is more slack allowed in how you get it done and how you spread out the time required to do it.  These types of jobs lend themselves to more application of mobile and work-at-home technologies.  However, this probably means a more invasive job that requires more work/life blending.  And even if you want to bypass these technologies to adhere to a strict 9 to 5 schedule, your co-workers may not agree.  Sympathies at the moment lie more with the workers who want to spread things out and do some work from home (and some personal stuff at work) so the “just work at work and leave me alone at home” crowd ends up looking like a heel for refusing to help with a system install from home over the weekend.

A Reuters post on the ABC issue (published here at the Dominion Post) worded this point of view well:

Productivity expert Laura Stack has little sympathy for the employee side of the argument. “Show me one employee who doesn’t waste time at work,” the Colorado-based author said. “I see so much abuse of working hours by employees – personal phone calls, socializing, checking eBay listings, booking personal travel, etc. – that I don’t believe it’s unreasonable for an employer to want a bit of work on personal hours.

“If you don’t want to be on call, don’t be a doctor, a computer technician, or a reporter,” she added. As technology moves ahead, and the days when “having a pager was a great big deal” are gone, said Peterson, “We’re going to have to trust people’s common sense, on both sides.”

Of course, most jobs are a mix.  The bosses know what deliverables they want, but don’t really know how difficult they are so they use time spent on them as a proxy.  Gen Y’ers don’t buy into this proxy.  Us Gen X’ers didn’t either.  I think we’ll see a shift towards more deliverable-based work as well as more blending of work and home life.  Those offended by having to adopt a mobile lifestyle to include work will be welcome to find a workplace that doesn’t have those demands, but those will be increasingly difficult to find.  Would you like fries with that?

I got a chance to talk to Oracle yesterday about how they plan to integrate the BEA middleware assets they picked up in their acquisition into their own middleware portfolio.  Oracle let it be known that - no surprise - Oracle strategy is constant and BEA integrates into it.  Fusion Middleware is the brand and it’s all about Fusion in this integration strategy.  Dictionary.com defines fusion as “a nuclear reaction in which nuclei combine to form more massive nuclei with the simultaneous release of energy.”  That seems to be what is happening at Oracle these days as the nucleus of Oracle and the nucleus of BEA (which had already combined with the nucleus from Plumtree) combine to form something pretty massive.  And there is certainly a lot of energy being released, so that definition certainly applies. 

Still, Oracle assures BEA customers that all products continue under “existing BEA support lifetimes”, there’s no forced migration, and license costs are grandfathered for existing customers. In fact, some support costs may come down since Oracle policy is to price support as a percentage of net price rather than list, but others could increase or decrease a bit since Tuxedo’s pricing tiers get remapped to CPUs.

I won’t comment much on development since that isn’t my coverage area.  I will say that JDeveloper is still the flagship development platform for Oracle.  BEA Beehive is just in maintenance and Workshop is a freebie in the Eclipse Pack. 

And now, the answer to the portal conundrum I wrote about in my “Four Portals of the Apocalypse” posting when Oracle announced its intention to acquire BEA.  For portals, as expected, the winner is WebCenter.  It’s not that the others are dead, but WebCenter is the “hot” product they want to talk about first, connect everything to, and anoint with all the cool, buzzword-compliant enhancements.  Users of the other portals (Oracle Portal, BEA WebLogic Portal, AquaLogic User Interaction aka Plumtree) need to figure out how soon a rewrite is going to be in their future since those products are in the “continue and converge” category (C&C).  A C&C portal will keep going forward for existing customers for quite a while (Thomas Kurian publicly stated the lifecycle would be about 9 years), but will not have new customers steered towards it and will eventually be merged into WebCenter. 

So, here’s my recommended strategy based on which Oracle portal product you’re using based on what I know so far. I’ve been told that more detailed migration plans will probably come out in 2-3 months:

• Oracle WebCenter: You lucky dog!  You picked the winner.  It’s a rosy future for you, full of the best piece parts from other portal products, new Enterprise 2.0 functionality, and you’ll meet lots of new friends at each annual WebCenter user’s group meeting.  For a new portal project being planned, WebCenter is the only reasonable choice in the Oracle portfolio unless you’re into planned obsolescence. 
• Oracle Portal or BEA WebLogic Portal: You’re probably OK coasting along as is unless you fall into one of a few categories.  If you’re really thinking of adding the newest functionality (Enterprise 2.0) and architectural standards (REST, RIA) you’ll want to start thinking about migration soon, although Oracle intends to have some WebCenter services plug into WebLogic Portal, Oracle Portal, and ALUI to be leveragable without migrating.  And if you are in the rare situation of having a strategic portal with a long lifespan expected ahead of it (5+ years), you’ll have to make a reminder for yourself in 2010 or so to start thinking about migration. 
• AquaLogic User Interaction: The picture for ALUI users is pretty similar to that of Oracle Portal and BEA WebLogic Portal – it’s in the C&C category so expect it to be supported for quite a while. Still, it’s my personal opinion that Oracle will have a harder time with ALUI since it will be chopped up into more pieces and there are lots of legacy installations with deep customization. Also, ALUI has a .NET side to its heritage. In the Plumtree days they had spent quite a bit of effort on building out .NET support. For example, the Enterprise Web Development Kit (EDK) could be installed with either a Java or .NET (C#) development and there was a .NET version of the EDK is available as a dynamic link library (DLL).  The .NET portlet creation capabilities are going to be rebranded as the Oracle WebCenter .Net Application Accelerator.

Oracle is rolling out a few new SKUs (packages) that will help portal owners. 

• WebCenter Services combines the WebCenter Framework with some Oracle pieces (BPEL Worklist, their portlet bridge and JSR 168 container) and sprinkles some ALUI and WebLogic Portal pieces in.  Ensemble is renamed Oracle Ensemble and put into services SKU and Analytics gets Oracle branding. 
• WebCenter Suite has everything in WebCenter services as well as restricted licenses for content, Oracle Presence, BPEL Process Manager, and search.  ALUI is renamed WebCenter Interaction and goes in the suite for now, although as of 11g there’s nothing in ALUI that they’d recommend for new deployments. AL Collaboration is renamed WebCenter Collaboration and goes in the suite until they can roll out new collaboration in WebCenter 11g.

I was a fan of the BEA Pages and Pathways products, both of which will melt into Fusion Middleware.  Pages melts into the WebCenter Framework. It will be part of WebCenter Composer for users to create mashups and its wiki and blog capabilities go into WebCenter Services in the 11g timeframe.  Pathways melts into two separate places.  Its social search merges into secure enterprise search and the social tagging merges into the 11g foundation.

All in all, this roadmap is pretty complete and as good as owners of Oracle Portal or BEA WebLogic Portal could have hoped for.  Owners of complex, customized ALUI portals need to see the writing on the wall and plan to migrate to the new WebCenter model (method TBD by Oracle) or re-architect off the Oracle platform entirely.  But one more telling statement about nuclear fusion may shed light on Oracle’s strategy of unifying all its pieces under the Fusion umbrella.  Wikipedia notes that “Artificial fusion in human enterprises has also been achieved, although not yet completely controlled.” Ah, yes, how true.  We still have to see how well this bit of fusion winds up being under control over the next few years.

Note: This is a cross-posting from the Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

I’m here at our Catalyst Conference in San Diego and just saw a great presentation from Alan Gutierrez of Think New Orleans.  Alan is a community organizer and, through a stunning set of photos from his city, showed the challenges that New Orleans faced after Hurricane Katrina and how social software in every possible form helped to provide informal, emergent connectivity between people when the formal, centralized organizations had failed.  One particularly poignant photo showed a road sign that had read “deaf child area” defaced to read “deaf government area”.

When necessary, open publishing of information enabled the shaming of local politicians and developers into often doing the right thing.  Information sharing was essential for putting together the individual pieces that formed a larger pattern.  For example, Alan described some shifty deals where a string of perfectly good homes along a street that developers probably wanted to freshen wound up being declared a health threat . Alan: “It’s hard to get local press, but we can get national press and then we get local press and then something gets done.”

Alan described how the idea of community that feeds much of Web 2.0 is a natural fit for New Orleans.  As Alan said, “This is a city that is familiar with community … Mardis Gras isn’t created by the chamber of commerce - it’s created by krewes that pool together to create a float.”

Much of Alan’s work has been around trying to ensure that the rebuilding of New Orleans doesn’t form an excuse for gentrification that replaces the communities in the city with generic, upscale suburbia that displaces existing residence.  Alan: “Life takes place outside in New Orleans … this is a 19th century city and we want to know the city we’re rebuilding is the city we lost; that we’re not building over it.”

Social software - including groups, wikis, blogs, and extensive use of Flickr - provided a way for disenfranchised residents to exchange information, note patterns, and organize to address them when required.  For example, in one case social software was used to pull together a rally of 5,000 citizens to protest a rash of violence . But, as Alan said, the use of these technologies was not just useful but necessary: “If you’re used to meeting people in your community in the coffee shop and if your coffee shop is now gone, you use these technologies because you’re compelled to”.  Today, “In New Orleans, being a citizen means being a knowledge worker”.

Yesterday I posted up a set of interruption models.  I mentioned in that post that I’d write another entry on how they can be used to test interruption study methodologies.  I know that sounds pretty arcane - mostly of interest to people doing interruption studies or interpreting their findings.  That may not sound like too many of you, but one survey in particular, from Basex, has gotten into a lot of popular press for its easy-to-digest dollar amount for “unnecessary” interruptions in the U.S. ($650,000,000,000).  It’s used by pop press journalists whenever they write about a fuzzy info-stress topic, but want to show this is really important and add a drop of academic-sounding data.  Any of them wanting to delve deeper can select from hundreds of academic papers on interruption, attention, and human-computer interface (interruptions.net has a great list), but none of those have a big dollar figure to quote.

My attempts to determine the methodology of the Basex study have been unsuccessful so far.  The way I would evaluate its legitimacy is the same way I’d evaluate any interruption study’s legitimacy - by lining it up against the models I’ve presented to see how accurately it would count them.  Clearly not all interruptions are “bad” or “unnecessary” - many of the interruption models I listed have a positive net closed-loop benefit.  A seemingly valid methodology that simply asks people how often they were interrupted (or observes them and records interruptions) and how much time they lost can provide a very inaccurate conclusion.  Each model I list (except maybe the jerk model and blast model) could be easily miscounted by a poor survey methodology.

For example, I believe the Help-me model to be a large proportion of interruptions.  This is where one person needs a little bit of someone’s time to provide a good deal of benefit to them.  A study that just counts interruptions and their cost would only count the costs and not the benefits to the interrupter which is often many multiple higher than the cost.  Only net closed-loop benefit analysis would hunt down the person that interrupted them and determine the value to them and add it back in.  That’s difficult to do in a survey, but essential for an accurate estimate.  Alternately a survey could ask how often you interrupted other people and how much benefit you got.

As another example, the Help-you model is common as well.  This is where someone is interrupted to be told they should stop or modify what they’re doing, perhaps due to new information that’s just come in.  But a methodology that only asks about the cost in time of each interruption in negative terms may miss the positive value the interruptee places on the interruption.

One more example: The Interaction model would throw any survey off if it doesn’t properly define “interruption” versus the simple act of collaboration.  I defined interactions as interruptions that take place within the task the person is currently working on.  Many people wouldn’t even consider this really an interruption.  Survey takers may randomly include interactions fitting this model as interruptions, possibly incorrectly counting each positive benefit as a negative.

Well, we’ve gone quickly through the cycle of seasons here in Chicago, passing from winter to spring to construction.  When working in my home office I’m now faced with a random barrage of interruptions from beeping trucks, pile drivers, and loud workmen that can’t afford walkie-talkies.  Living in a part of Chicago that was fully built 50 years ago, many feel the need to tear down perfectly good houses and erect new ones to match the current style (the “large brick block covering every allowable inch in 3 dimensions” school of architecture).  I think this inspired me to develop a list of interruption models that I posted over at the Collaboration and Content Strategies blog.  I figure I should post them here as well for greater input. These are still open for debate - so your comments and feedback are welcome.

Each has an example of how it would apply, followed with a sample numerical calculation based on the dollars gained or lost by the organization based on the interruption (assume this is $ based on time x fully loaded pay rate).

• Help-me model: Bill needs a moment of Stu’s time to proceed with his work
  • Value to interrupter (80) + value to interruptee (-20) = Net closed-loop benefit (60)
• Help-you model: Bill takes the time to let Stu know he needs to change his task approach
  • Value to interrupter (-10) + value to interruptee (50) = Net closed-loop benefit (40)
• Jerk model: Mick is an jerk that likes bugging other people about fantasy football, hurting both their productivity
  • Value to interrupter (-20) + value to interruptee (-30) = Net closed-loop benefit (-50)
• Machine interrupt model: Stu’s PC crashes. This distrubs Stu and has no benefit to the PC
  • Value to interrupter (0) + value to interruptee (-50) = Net closed-loop benefit (-50)
• Break model: Bill’s thinking has been getting less effective and he finds himself spinning on a simple task, so he interrupts himself and decides he needs a mental break.  He returns to work more refreshed and effective
  • Value to interrupter & interruptee (5) = Net closed-loop benefit (5)
• Interaction model: Stu and Bill are working on a task together, expecting each other’s input, and neither would really consider this an “interruption”
  • Value to interrupter (5) + value to interruptee (5) = Net closed-loop benefit (10)
• Alert model: A fire alarm goes off while Stu is working, interrupting him and saving his life
  • Value to interrupter (0) + value to interruptee (100) = Net closed-loop benefit (100)
• Scheduled interruption model: Stu is working hard on a task that requires concentration, but has to stop at 10:00 for a scheduled meeting, which interrupts his train of thought and will require recovery time upon resuming.  For this example, it is assumed the meeting is a project update for another project that Stu doesn’t get much out of but is obligated to attend
  • Value to interrupter (0) + value to interruptee (-10) = Net closed-loop benefit (-10)
• Lazy model: Mick could figure out his task alone if he applied some time and effort, but it just seems easier to ask his smarter colleague Stu. Too bad Mick will never learn to help himself and will keep bothering Stu
  • Value to interrupter (5) + value to interruptee (-7) = Net closed-loop benefit (-2)
• Training model: Bill is stuck in his task and needs to ask his smarter colleague Stu for information.  Bill learns a valuable lesson that can be immediately applied and Bill is now that much better at his job
  • Value to interrupter (10) + value to interruptee (-7) = Net closed-loop benefit (3)
• Blast model: Mick shouts out to the room to see if anyone wants to go to lunch.  No one wants to because Mick is a jerk, so they are annoyed
  • Value to interrupter (1) + value to interruptees (-50) = Net closed-loop benefit (-49)

• Social interruption model: Stu stops by his co-worker Bill’s desk and interrupts him to find out how his daughter is feeling after she got out of the hospital
  • Value to interrupter (?) + value to interruptees (?) = Net closed-loop benefit (positive?)

I talked this over with Mike Gotta, who brought up the point of reciprocity.  One enters into an implicit social contract that they will be gracious about interruptions in exchange for getting to interrupt others when needed.  The Help-me model should be encouraged as it has a net benefit for the organization, but it can also have a net benefit for Stu if he gets some of Bill’s time the next time he needs it.  He also pointed out that interruptions tied to communities can be worthwhile as people search for expert opinions and information.

For individuals feeling stressed and overloaded this list of models could help guide some introspection about the degree to which interruptions are causing the stress and which models need to be reduced. 

For the owner of an attention management project, surveying information workers for the types of interruptions they are experiencing can help optimize the communication flows and interruptions. 

For anyone presented with an interruption study (particularly those showing extremely high negative impact by interruptions) it provides a firetest of the study’s assumptions.  These models can be run through the methodology of the study to see how accurately it would count the net closed-loop benefit.  I’ll post more on this later.

It’s been a while since my last blog post as I’ve been kept running all over Europe lately doing speaking and visiting current and potential clients in Munich, Copenhagen, Vienna, and London.  My presentation on social computing for the Domino Notes Users Group in Bremen went fine except for my PC getting possessed and flipping slides around on me while presenting.

Now that I’m home I’m decompressing and reflecting on what I was hearing from the corporate and government organizations I talked to about collaboration and portals. 

• I found a great deal of interest in social software, but the dozen or so organizations I spoke with seemed a bit further behind the U.S. in terms of awareness and piloting.
• There was quite a bit of SharePoint work going on, but generally in a more controlled fashion than I’ve seen in the U.S.  SharePoint was being stripped down to fit into the rest of the environment, being used as just a web file store in one case and as a low-end content management system in another.  I prefer this approach to the whole-hog implementation that steps on the toes of other installed infrastructure that I see too often.
• Portals were a hot topic, with most organizations I visited using them, sometimes many of them.  In fact, portal consolidation and governance is as big an issue as it was in my last few visits to Europe.
• Enterprise virtual worlds came up twice, without much prompting from me.  One governmental agency was very interested in its use for rehearsal and disaster preparedness.

Now I’m off to work on the Mother of All Expense Reports.  

Well, that headline is what I’d like to write anyways.  But, of course, solving email addiction is beyond the capabilities of a mere software behemoth.  Still, Google took a humorously kitschy attempt in some new lab features for Gmail just released. 

By going into Gmail settings (the “Labs” tab) and enabling the “Email Addict” feature, you get a “Take a break” link added to your email:

Then, whenever you click on it, your screen blanks out and you get the following message:

At least until you reload the page and get back to your email. 

Cute.  Even though it’s just for fun, it does acknowledge that email addiction is on people’s minds.  Maybe not those of Google or the programmers themselves, as they may have meant this as a satiric swipe at their users who think this is a problem.  After all - why would they want its users to reduce their usage of email and IM when they seem to thrive on more and more personal information from users being stored on their servers?  Google needs bytes to live.  <zombie voice> “More bytes …” </zombie voice>.

Well, in any case, it’s a nice email addiction / information overload / attention management joke.  And it plays off the idea that people who are addicted to something have little ability to help themselves anymore and need external help. 

If Google really wanted to help these users I think there are some real features they could have added:

• Mail arrival schedules (hourly, morning/noon/evening, morning/night, daily): Remember waiting by the (real) mail box for the postman to arrive?  Unless you are expecting something to act on today, why not do that again and break the unconscious habit the rest of the day of checking for it?  You could set it for the frequency (for example, every hour on the hour) and create a whitelist of certain people or messages that get “express” delivery without waiting.
• Measurement capabilities.  Like many behavioral changes, measurement is often a key starting point and more.  This feature would provide measurements on the number of times email is checked and useful stats on frequency (per day, per hour) and graph when checking was done over time.  Granted this is a bit difficult when it’s just left open, so maybe this feature would have to be enabled and would turn off automatic refreshes.  Once people really see how much they check email reflexively they will be surprised and may do more to curb it if they think this is a problem.
• Slow delivery.  I find myself checking mail more often when I’ve just sent a bunch of emails because I am now waiting on the responses.  This creates an echo effect then where, for example, 20 emails sent out prompt 12 emails back (some quick, some slow, like clapping in a large cathedral).  I then respond to 8 of those, 5 people then respond back, etc until the echo dies away.  If the emails aren’t very urgent, using slow delivery (they go out in a bundle the next morning for example) would take a burden off for response checking and possibly enable some reflection that would have you change or rescind the messages before they are sent.  The “slow design” movement and slowmail have been advocating an approach like this for some time.  I think you’d turn this feature on as a default and then only flag messages individually if they need instant delivery.
• Tokens.  What if you only had a certain number of tokens per day or week to spend on checking email?  Maybe you start with 10 tokens in the morning and it costs you one each time you check email.  If administrators are having trouble with load, they could raise the cost to 2 tokens first thing in the morning or right after lunch.  You’d start noticing how often you’re really checking (see measurement above) and start planning out your checking better throughout the day.  I would recommend that extra tokens can carry over to the next day so you’re not encouraged to do a bunch of frantic checking at the end of the day.  Similar attempts to putting a price on email activity have been made for sending email (see Serios from Seriosity).
• A free e-book on Zen.  OK, this one is a bit out there.  Maybe it’s just me, but while email is ostensibly about communication and human connection, so often it seems to be all about one person and controlling.  Someone checks because they want to see if someone found the joke they sent out was funny, if they got someone else to finally admit they were right or agree to do what they said, if everyone else in the group agreed to their restaurant choice.  What does it mean about me if people don’t respond to me, listen to me, include me?  If my email/IM/message board posting/blog posting falls in the internet forest and no one responds, am I silent and irrelevant?  Like sound, does my message only matter if it causes something to resonate in someone’s head?  A reminder now and then to “be the water, not the rock” and “let things be and take what comes” may be all that some people need.