As noted in my previous post (which upset far fewer people than I expected) I’ve been out of town for the past week. Well, to no surprise I return to the office with a heavily bloated inbox containing hundreds of messages and missed conversations from the previous week. Yippee!
The strangest part about diving back into email was to see the number of replies and discussions all at once. To have hundreds of messages all about five or six different topics is actually pretty crazy. During the week when emails come through, it’s easy to respond, save, or delete, and that seems like it takes no time at all. But when batch processing hundreds of emails from the previous week, it seems a lot more cumbersome and overwhelmingly daunting. So what is the actual cost?
Apparently checking email costs $650 billion. The constant interruptions of non-mission-critical messages interrupt the day enough to lose massive amounts of productivity.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is incredible strength in the productivity of email, it’s just not always used correctly. Confirming and scheduling meetings works very well with Outlook’s meeting request scheduler. But discussing a recent news story or a “clean out the fridge” message and CCing hundreds of people on every reply? Maybe there’s another place for this.
Quick step back: office-wide discussion is incredibly important and helps bring an enterprise closer together to build teamwork, comradery, and so on, and important company/office news needs to be spread around so that all employees are on the same page. But is email the proper venue to do this? I agree with the guys at Mzinga, in that the better way to communicate within a company is through online communities.
The functionality of email is no longer what it used to be. Which is likely why Read Write Web claims that Email is in Danger. Ultimately I don’t think email will ever really be replaced, the same way we still have snail mail for many things (although yes, that’s slowing too), we will have a need for email for a long, long time.
But anyway, this is basically just a 6am rant about how I’m nervously avoiding having to deal with my inbox mess. But the biggest trick I know, that was illustrated here: close email when attempting to do something else. I checked my email this morning, saw the endeavor ahead, closed it and started doing something else. The only way I know how to combat the productivity suck of email, is to avoid it.
How do you fight email? If you have an idea then comment below or message @znh on Twitter. Just don’t email me about it.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:58 am
Amen, Zach.
I’m an email minimalist myself. I’ve learned to train people not to expect me to respond immediately to emails.
I did this a while back by delaying my response to most emails by about 24 hours. The effect was that people sent me much less email because they knew not to use it for urgent communication or questions they could answer themselves in less than 24 hours.
Too many people try to use email for instant messaging and then get annoyed if I don’t respond immediately. Maybe I’m busy getting work done!
July 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am
I have heard of companies and organizations that have an internal policy of no email on Fridays - they require that you call the person with whom you want to speak - or better yet, walk down the hall to their office. This not only has increased productivity on Fridays, but has increased community within these companies and encouraged employees to think twice about sending various email the other four days of the week. Of course, this needs to be a top-down initiative. One dude can just decide to ignore email on friday and expect to keep his job.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
@Dale-
Great point re: instant messaging. I forgot to even mention that in this piece. Most offices now have IM standard for every employee exactly for the purpose of cutting out meaningless emails.
And @Matt
I really do love the idea of some guy just boycotting email. I can see this working out pretty poorly.
But I also enjoy the idea of “no email time” - incidentally, in a previous life/job we had a mandatory “prime time” which was indeed for phone calls only- turn off your email and get on the phone. As annoying as this was, it worked really well.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I like the phone-only idea too - it certainly would eliminate some of the awkward encounters with the people that work just down the hall who you see every day but have never spoken to. You’d be forced to actually talk to them instead of sending an e-mail.
Also, in my previous job, we were instructed to make a phone call instead of writing an e-mail whenever the e-mail would have taken more than a minute or two to write, or if it was in any way urgent.
Finally, from now on, I’m not checking e-mails on Fridays. You have all been warned.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
I am in constant contact with Customer Service Representatives from our different locations around the country, and I have found that they are very good at ignoring emails, even when I cc their supervisor. This has forced me to get over my fear of phones and now instead of a 3 day to week turnaround, I see same day or next day responses.
As for Dave’s comment, I have had many people say hi to me in the hall whom I dont recognize, and people announce my presence in video conferences who I dont recognize, but have probably emailed with.
August 9th, 2008 at 7:41 am
great, usefull 0_0