Filtering out the important stuff

Like a lot of you, I spend what seems to be an inordinate amount of time checking my email. And not just for blog comments, either. Increasingly my clients and I are communicating this way.

Lately, I've been getting phone calls from clients: "Did you get my email?"

All too often the answer is "no."

Unless I've corresponded with a client by email in the past, too many of these important emails are routed into a spam filter. Especially (and, I suppose, understandably so) when there is an attachment to the message.

But this is like having a secretary who gives you all the junk mail and holds the important stuff at her desk.

You wouldn't like having to stop what you were doing to confront your assistant and ransom your important mail, would you? Well, I don't like chasing down important client material in my spam filters either.

It makes me worry about what I didn't know I got but should have seen.

I don't know what the answer to this conundrum is. I'm certainly grateful for spam filters that remove all the pharmaceutical advertisements and pornography solicitations. But that's not where I want to look for stuff that clients sent. To be safe, however, I now check my spam filters, at least once a day.

Once again, the time we've saved with the convenience of this super-duper fast method of communication is nullified by the additional tasks that are added on as the unintended consequence of our supposed advance. Humans are not quite obsolete yet.