Every week it seems there's another new service or product online that aims to solve the problem of information overload. Why can't we solve this problem on our own?

Toastio announced their new service today. It touts itself as Twitter for email. It limits the length of emails you receive to 350 words. Anything longer than is bounced back to the sender asking them to send a shorter message. I don't see any benefit in this, but I could be wrong.

One problem I immediately see with this is that it's another inbox that I need to manage. I don't want another inbox. I have enough of them already. Everyday we interact with different inboxes that feed us with streams of information that we view at intervals. Some of us spend hours in these inboxes while the more efficient among us might just check these inboxes once or twice a day spending just a few minutes of our precious time.

There is a couple of solutions to this problem.

1. The All-In-One Inbox

If you're still wanting to get all the relevant information you need then the all-in-one inbox is the solution. A smart inbox that pulls content from any publishing stream and orders everything in order of interest. It regularly updates and orders the stream each day, determining what type of content it should display based on your current location and status.

Sounds like a rather far fetched idea doesn't it? Well it is. There's two problems with this idea. The first is that building a single inbox that handles a variety of data from different sources is a big challenge. The second is that not all data sources are easy to subscribe to for updates. I think it's fair to say that the all-in-one inbox isn't something that we are going to see anytime soon.

2. Limit Yourself

Don't despair, the second solution is within easier reach. Limit yourself. Limit the number of inboxes you have, limit the amount of data coming into those inboxes and then limit how often you check those inboxes. Do this regularly enough and you'll spend less time in your inbox and more time working, creating or doing whatever it is that you do.

There's one thing about Toastio that I do like. The 350 word limit on emails. I've seen this in a number of different forms over the years but perhaps the one I remember the most is five.sentenc.es. The idea here is that your adhere to a five sentence limit on your outgoing email. While this isn't feasible for all your outgoing email, the idea of limiting the length of an email is one that we can all do with.

Why don't we do it though?

Well, aside from the fact that most people would give up on it faster than a New Year resolution, it would force people to re-think the email they're sending. For some people that's just too much like hard work. Rather than pausing for a moment to think about what to write, they would rather put their every thought and opinion in a email spanning 500 words when only 150 would have done it. So even asking people to write less and think more isn't going to make your inbox go down. No reasons why you can't make it your own persoal limit when sending emails though.

And that's the last thing about limiting yourself. Limit your outgoing data. Limit your email length, limit your social network time, limit your time aimlessly surfing the net. Limiting yourself in this way gives you more time to get stuff done. The important stuff.