E-mail is at risk of killing its own usefulness. Daily e-mail volume is now at 210 billion a day worldwide and increasing, according to The Radicati Group, a market research firm.
The burden of managing all that e-mail has prompted a backlash. One extreme reaction is “e-mail bankruptcy,” where users throw up their hands and erase their entire inboxes. Many admit the distraction makes it near impossible to get work done, or even socialize normally.
Kelly Kirk, who works for a trade group in downtown Washington, D.C., says checking e-mail comes between her work and her personal life.
“I’m constantly ducking my head under tables during events to check my e-mail. I hid behind a tree once when my boyfriend said I wasn’t allowed to check my BlackBerry,” Kirk says. To get “real work” done, she says she now turns off the computer and her BlackBerry.
So what? I empty my inbox daily!
Here are some initial thoughts about ways to control e-mail, particularly within an organization that can establish rules or norms for its members:
—Create a strong presumption against using “Reply to All.” Make “Reply to Sender” the default choice. Include a “Reply to Some” feature that would facilitate letting a user send a reply to only some members of a group (without having to remember their names and addresses). If a user selects “Reply to All,” have the software ask whether the user really needs to reply to everyone.
—Press users to make the SUBJECT of their e-mails clear—really clear—in the subject line. This would help recipients sift through their in-boxes more quickly.
—Crack down on routinely marking messages “Urgent.”
—Within an organization, discourage PR-type mass e-mailing. So what if you don’t learn right away that Rhett now heads the mailroom or that Scarlett got her name in the paper. And when you do sent mass messages, do so in a way that precludes bozos from replying to all.
In line with Irenaeus, when sending an e-mail to a group, especially a notification group, send the e-mail to yourself in the “to” box, and put your group recipients in the “bcc” box. That way, the “reply all” types don’t have anyone to send to.
I’ve somehow ended up on the e-mail notification of some bunch of greenie architects who like to send each other the latest gossip on LEED certification standards and proposed changes to the building codes. One sends to all the others, and then they all start doing “reply all” to each other, and I’ve got 15 or 20 spams off a single e-mail at the end of the day, none of which I care about. I’ve decided architects as a group must be one of the biggest time-waster professions.
[i] I hid behind a tree once when my boyfriend said I wasn’t allowed to check my BlackBerry,” Kirk says. [/i]
Wait. What?
He boyfriend tells her she can’t do something, and so she sneaks behind his back and does it anyway??? There’s a mature relationship. She should just tell him “No, I need to check it, so I’m going to.”