Could we be witnessing baby-steps towards more appropriate personal communications methods?
We can spend up to half our working day going through our inbox, leaving us tired, frustrated and unproductive.
A recent study found one-third of office workers suffer from e-mail stress.
The article refers to Deloitte’s short-lived ‘no-internal-email-Wednesday’ which it reckons has made staff think more carefully about the email they send and whether there is a more appropriate communication method such as picking up the phone or talking face-to-face.
I agree, we should be more considered in our communications but our places of work on the whole haven’t even begun to embrace tools like IM, RSS, collaborative working, online project management, social networks etc etc.
My personal email traffic (both in- and out-bound) has significantly decreased since engaging with some of these tools. I refuse to subscribe to email lists – choosing RSS instead, and I use IM (if I can) to have quick conversations with friends. I use Google Groups to manage extra-curricular projects, Twitter keeps me in touch with friends and acquaintances and I use Facebook to organise my social life.
If only I could (or, more appropriately, was allowed to…) work more like this in my 9-5!
There’s a certain amount of generationality about it; I tried to impress upon a fairly senior member of staff (in his 40s, I think) how useful and key RSS is, but his email client was utterly central to his working day. Having to open yet another program just wouldn’t cut it for him.
I think all the Inbox Zero stuff is hitting the mainstream, though. Alpha geeks have known for a while that email has its limits, but it takes time to percolate through to, say, BBC News.
Now there will probably be a backlash against the email backlash
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
- Sue.
Hear hear! I’ve cut w-a-y back on my email usage. Basically, if there’s an alternative, I go for it. (Usually RSS.) Although if you talk to a lot of clients, or even gurus like Tom Steinberg, they’ll tell you there’s still life in the old dog yet. Maybe we’re just ahead of the curve.
I think we must be (ahead of the curve)!
I get the impression ‘digital natives’ (young folk) tend to use chat and social networks to communicate with pals more than they use email. Be interesting to see what happens when they join the workforce.
One thing I still need email for is receipts for purchases. I’m such a disorganised type that being able to go back and find a receipt for something I’ve ordered online in my mailbox is something I couldn’t live without.
I’m sure we could get rid of that problem, though, by linking online purchases to a openID account in some way (or something like it) and having everything stored there, centralised… Hmm… *ponders*
I guess if I bought *everything* through Paypal that’d kind of do the same thing… but why would I want to do that?
Ive spent many many years explaining to clients that Direct Email marketing is not as efficient as a Good Blog/Website/RSS feed Only recently have they begin feeling stressed with email enough to begin asking the question. How do I get my inbox cleared down. On inspection they collect so much notification ( Bacn ) cruft that removing this and teaching them to not top post and to not include messages in a reply has dramatically improved their relationships with email.
This is one that will change for many many more and Im glad to see others considering it as well.
I suspect a lot of it comes down to personal preference. For a long time I was overwhelmed with email and it was of little use, but as I’ve made progress towards a smaller inbox and a more rigorous process of filing incoming items I find that email is incredibly useful again for certain types of conversations. In particular it works very well when working across timezones.
It probably helps that I have all but one of the lists I’m on going to gmail, and checking that is a separate process from reading personal mail.
Since Apple Mail introduced RSS support I’ve moved a few key feeds into that so that updates from tools like basecamp are increasingly email-like, and NetNewsWire becomes something I can check in on less regularly.
My hope is that over time email won’t die, but our tools for managing it will improve and the population at large will pick up on the fact that we early adopters already grasp which is that we should have the power to direct our input streams to the tools and through the filters that we choose. I like email, so I’ll use email software, someone else likes IM so they can easily have a bot that channels their alerts to their IM client. They’re all just packets of text, so with the right interfaces re-routing them isn’t terribly hard.
As I said in another comment just now – sorry these comments only just appeared – need to tweak some wordpress settings…
Some great responses here – thanks guys! (and ‘hi’ Sue!)
@Trevor May raises the important issue of record keeping because at least with email I can (sometimes painfully!) track down past conversations.
I believe there is an additional challenge with legal/contractual issues around how conversations are recorded – from a relationship as well as court-of-law perspective.
But I don’t know a great deal about this… anyone?