Remember when email was brand new?  It was amazing.  You could send someone a note and get a reply without all the small talk associated with calling them on the phone.   This so rocks! 

 

Sooooooo, fifteen years later, how’s that working out for you?  Still looking at email as  your savior? 

 

A lot of people, like IBM staffer Luis Suarez, aren’t.   As described in the June 29^th issue of the New York Times, Suarez has started to diversify, shifting a lot of his email flood to phone calls, blogs, wiki’s, networking sites, and instant messaging.  But is that the wave of the future, is that what everyone should be doing?     

 

To start with, we need to consider a couple of points.

 

First, this is not an ‘email’ problem, it’s an ‘information handling’ problem.  As the number of people we connect with increases, the number of ‘information units’ (IUs) coming our way also increases.  And every one of these IUs wants a piece of us.  Email is one way that those IU’s come in to us but it is not the only way, especially if you start diversifying ala Luis. 

 

Second, we need to accept that all emails are an interruption, just like someone sticking their head in our office or calling us on the phone when we are sitting down to eat.   That doesn’t make them evil; interruptions are how the world let’s us know something is going on and sometimes that information is critical to what we are doing.  But interruptions do derail whatever you are working on at the moment.  I know everyone thinks you can handle email by multi-tasking, answering and writing emails while you are doing something else, but the simple truth is – you can’t.  The human brain doesn’t actually multi-task (unless you include breathing as one of the tasks).  What it does do is ‘short time frame swapping’, which lets you do two or more tasks less efficiently than if you did each one separately.  No matter how you spin it, email is an interruption and the only question you have is whether the information stream that it introduces is  more important than the one you are currently dealing with. 

 

Finally, bringing things under control may require some changes in you.  I am going to ignore those of you who parade your email numbers around like a badge of honor.  You need professional help by certified counselors and I urge you to get it.  But even normal people can develop a mind set where they need to be constantly communicating with someone.  You can see it in their eyes; they finish one call or clear their email and look up with a desperate, lost expression as they frantically try to figure out who they could contact next.   If that’s you, get a grip.  Email because there is a reason, not just because you can. 

 

Now maybe none of this is important.  I mean maybe it’s just the way things are, like the way your brother-in-law eats soup or having poker get so much air time on ESPN.  But I think it does matter because productivity is very important today.  In some situations it makes the difference between the keeping your job and being released to ‘pursue other interests’.  And there is no doubt that email can seriously eat into your productivity.  More importantly, however, the constant interruptive nature of email can be slowly, quietly, inexorably exhausting, draining your energy and turning the days into obstacles that you need to drag yourself over. 

 

So what do we do?  Shut off our email and head for Katmandu?  Get ourselves hypnotized so that it doesn’t bother us to have 500 unread emails in our inbox?  Or is there another option? 

 

Luis Suarez recommends shifting some of the IU’s to other communication mediums, but is that a complete strategy for reining in your email?  What else can you do to limit the interruptive effect that it introduces?   Quite a bit, actually, and if you drop me an email (dave@shireyllc.com) I will send you a special detailed ‘Email Action Plan’ that provides some very concrete steps to help you get a handle on your email.  (And yes, I realize there is a certain irony in me expecting you to send an email.)  There is no obligation. Representatives will not contact you.  I will just send you the action plan.  I already have your email address so what else can I do to you?   So shout out and see what kind of crazy ideas I have about reducing your email interruptions and make yourself more productive.