Can't communicate - too busy with email
Choose a better tool than email for some of your communication jobs.
Mark Hurst has been blogging about email bankruptcy a fair amount recently - the idea that overwhelmed executives sometimes feel there's no option but to delete their inboxes and start again. With estimates saying that the average knowledge worker will send/receive 199 corporate emails per day by 2010, it's clear that something is very wrong.
Mark lambastes a number of people for asking for a technological solution to the problem. He also advocates a change in behaviour - his "bit literacy" approach. All sensible enough - but then I noted that there already is a technological solution the problem. Sort of.
But first you have to reframe the question. Intead of "how can I get through email with less pain?" try this one: "How can I optimise the way I communicate overall?"
My colleague Kelsey Smith has been working on a project for a global organisation that makes it money handing information. His experience there showed him an organisation thriving by using a range of different communications media:
"Email is a blunt knife. So they use multiple channels, each with different properties and used in different scenarios. Email is a data flow - a continuous stream of low-urgency background conversations happening on various lists. Blogs and Twitter fulfil a similar purpose: context. Instant messaging is used for near-synchronous conversations without being as intrusive as a phone call. And face-to-face conversation is used for urgent and complex subjects that require focus and nuance."
So - the best solution to email overload comes from selecting the right medium for each conversation you want to have.
Try an experiment. Find a contact or colleague who is already a happy to use IM. Next time you want to sort something out with them, force yourself to use IM instead of email. See if you get better results with less effort. It worked for me.
I could be way off, of course. Jakob Nielsen classified IM as "information pollution" back in 2004. And Linda Stone reminds us that monitoring too many information channels at once can be very stressful.
On the other hand, Facebook has just introduced chat, and GMail has had built-in chat for several years. And plenty of younger users dismiss email as too much bother. (If you are going to use email, here as some good tips from a 19-year-old).
We have a landscape of communication tools - including blogs, wikis, twitter IM and email. Using them right, can help stave off email bankruptcy.
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Absolutely agree with you. A carpenter using a hammer for everything is analogous to a communicator using only email for communication. I like to think about communication as a spectrum from asynchronous to synchronous (calling the "gooey middle," semi-synchronous) and high fidelity to low fidelity. Email is async and typically low fidelity (though new technologies can contribute to higher fidelity when sound, voice, photos and videos are added). I.M. is sync. SMS is often used semi-synchronously. Video conferencing is high fidelity. Text only, low fidelity. Ideal communication technologies really offer a range and we can match to context and content. Async, low fidelity -- great for information dissemination and not always so great(but sometimes okay) for decision making, for example.
You are right on the money...
I've been working with overloaded execs who are either on the receiving end or the sending end (or both) of trying to use email for the wrong stuff, or in the wrong way.
Email is NOT dialogue, although so many people try to make it so. It is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole!
I try to encourage people to think about the overall transaction time, not just the time it takes to get the email off the proverbial desk...
Getting some spanking discipline is also a good thing; David Allen, Getting Things Done and GTD is an excellent way of canning the spam. http://www.davidco.com/
>Capturing anything and everything that has your attention
>Defining actionable things discretely into outcomes and concrete next steps
>Organizing reminders and information in the most streamlined way, in appropriate categories, based on how and when you need to access them
> Keeping current and "on your game" with appropriately frequent reviews of the six horizons of your commitments (purpose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects, and actions)
Much of the overload is not that we get too much (although we do), but that we don't process things effectively.
For those blessed Mac users out there, THE best tool for GTD is THINGS http://www.culturedcode.com/things/