Why I love email
My friend and classmate Josh just wrote a really good case for why email sucks. He thinks that email is a bad hack to solve the following problems:
- Scheduling
- Discussion Topics
- General Info (i.e. newsletters and mailing lists)
- Reminders/To-dos
It seems I use my email similarly to Josh, except for the 4th point (and I’ll get to that just below). But I would disagree that email is a bad hack to solve these problems — I think email is a great hack to solve all of these problems.
I’m going to start with Reminders/To-dos. Josh mentions that Mailbox isn’t the answer, because it turns your email into a to-do list. I find this to be the opposite of true. Mailbox stops me from making my inbox a to-do list. I used to let emails pile up in my inbox until I could deal with them later, and I almost never dealt with them later. With Mailbox (and my compulsive desire to reach #inboxzero) I am forced to take action on emails as they come in — to-do emails go straight into Things, and then they’re archived. No more to-dos in my inbox.
Next I’ll take on Scheduling. I love being able to email gcal invites within the Google ecosystem. Google calendar even has a built-in scheduling tool that does the job of when2meet or Doodle, as long as everyone keeps their calendar updated to accurately reflect their schedules. Most students don’t keep their calendars updated, so the tool is mostly useless. But a stand-alone scheduling app would require the same attention, so this is more of a problem with the user than the tool.
I think that the most basic use-case of email is for General Info, this is why email was invented. Instead of getting junk mail, I get junk email. Very little of it is interesting, which is why I usually unsubscribe from as many lists as I can. I’m more of a proactive news-searcher so I hate getting newsletters, but for someone who likes to aggregate content, email seems perfect, right?
I’d agree with Josh that Discussions can get messy in email. The 100 message thread is not something to be proud of. But I have searched endlessly for a group discussion platform, and I can’t find anything. Seriously, if anyone knows of a more organized way to hold email-like discussions, please tell me! But even if I found a perfect solution, there remains a huge roadblock — getting everyone I know to sign up for it.
The single greatest thing about email is that everybody has one. It doesn’t matter if my luddite friend still uses hotmail with IE6, he can participate equally in a discussion with a group of people using Gmail with Mailbox. Once I have an email address, I don’t need anything else. Sure I can improve my experience with apps like Mailbox, Things, and Sunrise, but I don’t have to, and many people (who will probably never read Medium) only want the bare minimum.
I’m usually one of the first on the hypetrain for new this-for-that apps, but even I’m already weary of how many super-specialized applications there are to solve tiny problems. I don’t want 4 different apps optimized for scheduling, discussions, general info, and to-dos. I’m happy with just one that does a pretty decent job.
