Over e-mail

It is nice to know that I’m not alone in the world with how I’ve been feeling about e-mail the last year. There is just too damn much of it. It seems that more and more people are hiding behind e-mail in place of face to face interaction and that many are using it to cover their butts so they can avoid accountability for their decisions. Even worse I’ve seen e-mail bullying on the rise – where people use it as an intimation tool, writing things they’d never say in a meeting to obtain group by in. I was a mid level no one in the corporation I left and there were days I’d get upwards of 400 mails. I got to a point where I felt like my job was to answer e-mail, I lived in my inbox out of survival for my job. (I don’t even want to think about all the nights in front of the TV – I plugged away, chasing the elusive under 50 unopened mails before turning in for the night.)

Yesterday, there was an article in the Seattle Times, The e-mail inbox is falling out of favor that stated, “According to a growing number of academics, "technologists" and psychologists, our dependence on e-mail — the need to attend to a constantly beeping inbox — is creating anxiety in the workplace, adversely affecting the ability to focus, diminishing productivity and threatening family bonds.”

The best part of the whole article for me was, “Timothy Ferriss, author of "The 4-Hour Workweek," says that what's wrong with e-mail is that it simulates forward motion but doesn't necessarily mean action.” I think he nailed it – and it explains why hundreds of thousands of people come home every night from the office and don’t feel like they accomplished a thing.

Enjoy the article and as a little game ask yourself next time you send a mail – why you are choosing e-mail as your communication tool.