Swamped? Let E-mail Recipients Know How Busy You are Automatically
Some days you are on top of your to-do list and get back to everyone who e-mails you in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Sometimes you can't even find the lamb because it's hidden under an avalanche of e-mail messages. Wouldn't it be great if colleagues could automatically get a general idea of how busy you were, so they could set their own expectations for how soon you'll respond?
Done and done. If you use Gmail, that is. Courteous.ly is a clever Gmail add-on that generates a link you can insert in your e-mail signature (or anywhere else for that matter). When someone clicks the link, they'll get a quick assessment of how busy you are based on your Gmail inbox.
Courteous.ly is easy to configure. You can tell the service to measure your workload by how many total messages are in your inbox, how many are unread, or how many messages you have recently sent.
Another cool feature: your status page can optionally suggest that if they send a one-sentence message, it'll go to the top of your inbox. And if someone puts [whenever] in the subject line, it'll be treated as a low priority message and therefore delivery will be delayed until the e-mail load goes down.
If you live out of Gmail, this is a cool little service that can help you manage your mail better and help the folks you e-mail to better manage their communication with you.
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