GETTING BURIED BY E-MAIL.

Byline: Lina S. Kadaba Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

FYI: Anybody need Phillies tickets? ... FYI: Here's an update on Project XYZ. ... FYI: Enough e-mails, ALREADY!

Many's the manager who'd love to fire off that last message in an effort to stanch the excess of electronic mail - from social FYIs to business updates - clogging computer screens, and workdays, everywhere.

``You've always got to be on top of it,'' said Jack Suess, associate director of computing at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Without a doubt, especially when you typically receive 1,200 - yes, 1,200 - e-mails a week and you spend 30 hours sorting and responding to this cascade of digital correspondence.

While upkeep of his mail practically makes for a full-time job, that task is not Suess' only responsibility. He said he spends another 30 hours a week on his real duties at the university.

``You dread going away. If I go away for 10 days, I'd come back and literally have 1,800 e-mails,'' he said, sounding weary.

Many of us, it seems, are drowning in a deluge of bits and bytes. In 1994, we sent 764 billion e-mails from work, according to an analysis for the Electronic Messaging Association. By 2000, the number is projected to balloon to 4 trillion.

All this electronic chatter can consume enormous time. Some executives admit they kill all their messages - unread - assuming that if the information was that important, the sender would call. At Computer Associates International in Islandia, N.Y., chairman Charles Wang gave up his own e-mail account (too many CC's on routine memos) and ordered the software company's e-mail system to be shut down from 10 a.m. to noon and 2 to 4 p.m., a sort of quiet period to allow employees to concentrate on other work.

Partly, the glut stems from a new technology that arrived in many offices without instructions on when to use it. We set up lunch with a client, and we send an FYI to the boss. But should we? We

make an inch of progress on a project, and we send an update to the entire department. But should we?

``Are we overloading some of our best people with more information than they can handle? Yes,'' declared David De Long, a research fellow at the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation in Boston.

In a recent working paper titled ``Coping With Communication Overload: The New Productivity Crisis?'' he wrote: ``More time is now spent processing `FYI' copies of marginally relevant electronic mail messages, sifting through publications, and searching databases, both internal and external, for potentially useful information.''

E-mail, whether we like it or not, has changed the way we work, by speeding up the business cycle from days to hours, even minutes, and by flattening organizations.

Some studies have shown that e-mail encourages more participation by lower-status employees and increases production of ideas, according to Max Kliger, an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College. E-mail, he said, reduces inhibitions stemming from status hierarchies, the ``quaking in your boots in front of the Big Cheese syndrome,'' you might say.

But e-mail also has its share of bugs.

Some employees blatantly misuse the system with personal messages. One SmithKline Beecham employee was recently reprimanded for trying to launch a chain e-mail, said John Parker, senior vice president of information resources.

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Photo

Photo: To keep up with the growing flood of e-mail, ``You h ave to build your tolerance,'' says lawyer Chris Karras, who gets 120 3-mail messages a day. It's too much for some: They delete everything.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service