Awash in e-mail
I’ve been online long enough to remember the giddy feeling on the rare occasion when an e-mail would appear into my inbox. At that time (before I had even ventured onto the World Wide Web) my e-mail address was something like 72066.6022@compuserve.com.
Now I spend more time deleting e-mail than I used to spend online. For many of us, hours of what used to be semi-productive work time are consumed reading, responding and deleting e-mail. The New York Times recently ran a story that doesn’t break a lot of new ground on the issue, but includes a little historical analogy that I found apt.
Today’s advice from time-management specialists, to keep our e-mail software off, except for twice-a-day checks, replicates the cadence of twice-a-day postal deliveries in (H.L.) Mencken’s time.
Ms. Rodgers said that Mencken was acutely disturbed by interruptions that broke his concentration. The sound of a ringing telephone was associated in his mind, he once wrote, with “wishing heartily that Alexander Graham Bell had been run over by an ice wagon at the age of 4.”
Blogger Rex Sorgatz suggests we’re making it more complicated than it needs to be:
Listen people, I get a lot of email too. Probably something like 500 missives per day. But this really isn’t that difficult to fend off. Let me help… Tactic #1: Delete unnecessary items as they come in. Tactic #2: Reply to items when you have free time in elevators, meetings, subways, etc. Tactic #3: Don’t leave work until you’re down to five items. Tactic #4: Stop writing about how much email you get. Done.
If you’re looking for email productivity tips, Lifehacker is a good place to browse.
Lamest e-mail I’ve received lately came from an outfit called “Write It Well,” which offers a book designed to help companies boost their employees’ abilities to write and handle email. An example:
Wasted time affects a company’s overall productivity and financial statements and in today’s increasingly global economy, companies rely on e-mail to allow large teams across various time zones to work together efficiently on projects.
Want to see more? It continues:
When extreme time differences are combined with various languages, poorly written e- mail can be detrimental to a project’s results and deteriorate team dynamics, both of which directly affect a company’s bottom line.
I would argue that blather like this is nearly as much an obstacle to me getting my work done as spam. Just get to the point.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
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