“Can everyone just stop whining about information overload?”, is a great opening line by Paul Hemp in his piece, “Death by Information Overload” from the September 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review.

It’s the kind of line which grabs us by our smartphone (or dumbphone, if the case may be), and sounds a relentless ringtone until we wake up and answer the call to action.

Sure, I’ve thought all about the whining, too, and how tiresome information overload has become. Let’s face it, it’s either shape up or ship out.

Shaping up is exactly what Paul Hemp offers in this candid portrait of people who are just eking to get by. Hemp acknowledges that in the knowledge economy, information is our most valuable commodity, but some of us may be struggling with information inundation.

One of the biggest culprits is e-mail; once our good friend, who now seems to pummel us. Only a few years ago, we were excited to see “you have mail” appear across our monitors, during those times when there were only a few messages in our inbox, and what felt like all the time in the world to respond. But now, if we’re away from our desk for a few simple hours, the emails just keep coming and coming. The more we try to catch-up, read and delete, it’s as if fuel was added to the fire.

Hemp says, “Regaining some productivity may require you to shed feelings of guilt and inadequacy about not promptly answering e-mail.” But shedding guilt can only go so far. We need help, concrete suggestions; the type of advice a life coach might give you.

That’s why I was really inspired by Hemp’s list, “10 Ways to Reduce E-Mail Overload.” Hemp credits the list to lifehacker, 43folders, davidco, as well as to his own personal life experiences.

Hemp has suggestions for being both e-mail recipient and sender:

• Avoid constant distractions, turn off automatic notifications of incoming email.
• Don’t waste time sorting messages into folders
• Don’t highlight messages you intend to deal with later. And, if you won’t be able to respond to an e-mail for several days, acknowledge receipt and tell the sender when you’re likely to respond.
• Make messages easy to digest by writing a clear subject line and starting the body with key point
• Use boldface headings, bullet points or numbering to highlight action items-and to note who’s responsible to each one.
• To eliminate the need for recipients to open very short messages, put the entire contents in the subject line, followed be “eom” (end of message)
• Whenever possible, paste the contents of an attachment into the body of the message
• Minimize email ping-pong by making suggestions (when should we meet?)
• Before you choose “reply to all,” stop and consider the e-mail burden that your choice places on each recipient

And perhaps the pièce de résistance words of advice

• Send less email: an outgoing message generates, on average, roughly two responses.

What solutions do you have for managing information overload, and in particular, e-mail?