I unfortunately missed the 2008 IORG conference, but it sounded really interesting.  Here are some stats offered by Jonathan Spira in his keynote:

• The cost of unnecessary interruptions plus recovery time (time spent getting back to where you were, if indeed you do get back there) to the U.S. economy is $650 billion as of 2007.
• Most interruptions are neither urgent nor important (but we think they are as we go and interrupt people anyway).
• The above represents 28% of the knowledge worker’s day.A mere 12% of the knowledge worker’s day is spent in thought or reflection.
• We spend 15% of the day searching for things and 20% in meetings.

But, is this really information overload?  Email and meeting overload, definitely, but these stats reflect knowledge worker's daily tasks, not necessarily their consumption and management of information.  In some ways, these stats reflect the connection between productivity and email overload, just as serious a problem.

Information Overload, in my mind, is a peer, rather than superset, of email overload.  Tools for dealing with information overload address searching and displaying data, while tools for dealing with email overload address bad emailing habits, and email efficiency.  Email overload is connected to productivity, while information overload is connected to executive. 

If you've spent even 5 minutes skimming gtd.alltop.com, you'll probably understand why I've been thinking about the connection between organizational ability and productivity.  Honestly, blogs on productivity are notorious in that they're generally more about how to organize and track your tasks than how to be more efficient.

Productivity is a measure of work accomplished - the amount 1 person can do in their 8 hour work day. This may be measured by units assembled, lawns mowed, or more recently, emails per hour.  The connection between the amount of work an individual can accomplish and their organizational ability is tenuous - some people may require a high degree of organization to complete their tasks, others won't.  What I was really looking for, but didn't find, was a blog on how to handle more information, more tasks, more email, and be more productive.  Maybe there are components of the different GTD blogs that touch on true productivity, but for people that aren't organized, maybe there's something more out there.  Just a thought.

Microsoft released a prototype plug-in for Outlook today called Email Prioritizer. The product addresses a much needed feature gap in Outlook: the lack of *true* prioritization.

The idea is pretty simple - "priority" as currently defined in Email-speak is an option set by the sender (high, normal, or low) that indicates to the recipient how important the email is.  The obvious problem with that is senders are notoriously bad at actually gauging how important an email is to the recipient, so the concept of priority only takes into account one dimension. Microsoft's solution introduces a separate dimension. 1 to 3 stars are assigned to a given email based on a set of rules and meta-data. For instance, and Email from my boss automatically gets 3 stars (the highest priority), while an email from a random person will probably only get 1. Additionally, the software allows you to "pause" incoming email for a set amount of time, hopefully giving you a chance to catch up.

I'm happy to see Microsoft finally taking Email overload more seriously. I say this a lot, but Outlook was really designed for a time when we were getting 10 emails a day, not 100. Do I think Email Prioritizer goes far enough? No. First, I believe stars are too simplistic a way to prioritize. A low priority Email might be that way because it's purely informational (or, a purely informational email may be high priority if it's in response to a question one asked). Also, while I think the pause button may be useful in certain cases, most people will still hear their phone go off, negating any positive mental effect. There's probably a better solution.