Do We Really Still Need Emails?

Daily Blog six/365

This is a question which has been wondering in my head for a few months now. Do we really still need email services? Don’t you think it’s the worst kind of communication we are using right now? In this age and with the technology that is available to us, why are we not communicating in real-time? Sure, everybody cannot be available to us at any time. But that’s not the point, any party can reply at any time. I know there will be many questions like what about the people who want to apply to jobs or how would you send an essential document to someone like a quotation for a product or service. All we need is change our mindset, let’s apply reverse engineering to this problem. If the result we want has “real-time interaction” as the keyword, then we need to first look at available options we have, and there are plenty.

Starting with having casual communication on WhatsApp to Slack that we use for work team. Some organizations use WhatsApp as their mode of communication, and I won’t be an advocate for it because security and accountability can be an issue. Slack is still a better option as its more secure. To me, email is like a postal service minus the delivery time. Microsoft has yet not figured out how to add read receipt in Outlook for Mac which is a shame. Why not integrate work with chat. Why should I send an email to a person asking for the status of something when I can just call them?

Productivity Tip — If you can get the information you want on the phone, just call.

People spend hours daily just to reply to emails every day. And keeping your Outlook open at all times doesn’t let you concentrate on anything else. Even I need to respond to email every day. I fix 90 mins splitting them into 30–30–30 mins to reply to emails. Emails can wait, if they are that important, then the other person might just call you.

Please note: I do send emails during the other time of the day if it’s essential. That’s why I said I schedule a specific time to reply to emails.

Schedule your day productively. For the 30 mins focus mode, I use Tide app. Just switch on the app, put on your headphones and focus on work.

See you tomorrow. :)