Nancy:

It's just a question of self-discipline I think. That and the fact that most of the email I receive isn't worth reading.

I think it was when I realised that most email doesn't actually benefit me in any way that I found the self-discipline to stop reading it. Once upon a time when I got an email in my inbox, my reaction was "Wow! Someone has sent me an email! Cool!" and that was because receiving email was so rare.

Now we all have to become much more selective because of the torrent of email we all receive every day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on maybe a hundred mailing lists, and I hardly ever unsubscribe. I use one email account to receive all my mailings from those lists, and what I do is when I check my email, I scan for a subject line that catches my eye.

Anything with my name in the subject gets automatically ignored. I find it corny, although I know it works with many people.

Anything with an exclamation mark (or two!!) (or three!!!) gets ignored.

Something that intrigues me and leaves me with an unfinished thought will usually get my attention. So a title like "I noticed something strange this morning." would get a look from me. Or "Would you mind helping me?" would probably work on me too.

If I'm busy, I'll just highlight all the messages and mark them as read.

So with me (and I guess many people), it's pot luck if you get my attention, but you can help it along with a well thought out subject line.

To answer your question about the forum, as there would only be two or three people using it, my intention would be to check it every so often. The benefit of that would be I wouldn't be distracted by anything else, and I would only be focussed on the things I needed to be.

Alternatively, I could set it so that I'm sent an email notification every time a new message or reply is posted in a thread, and set up a new (and obscure) email account just for that. Then I could run a system tray application that alerted me whenever a new email arrived on that account.

That would keep me in the loop and I wouldn't have to check it so often. The downside to that is I could be interrupted when I'm working on something, and it's the interruptions that decrease our productivity. So maybe I wouldn't do that, but it might work for you or others.

Donna:

I already have one of those as you know, but even so I don't check it that often unless I have something on. The forum should eliminate the need to check even that.

I know when I'm going to receive messages from my Master Mind Group (call-in details), so I only check that account then, in addition to the twice weekly I check everythng else. Or at least my goal of twice weekly again, and then once per week after that.

As for TV and News, you know that no news is good news, and that the media know that good news is no news, so they'll spend most time reporting the bad stuff.

Gareth:

I use IMAP to collect and sort my email using multiple email accounts, and filters only work with POP3. I use OE, but I believe this is true of TB too.

That's a damn good idea though. Everybody take note of that.

-Frank