Hate email?
Remember That Emails Don’t Write Themselves
Discussing email elicits strong reactions, everything from dread and despair to anger and frustration. The more overrun a person’s inbox, the stronger the feelings. While some simply hate email, others are downright overwhelmed by it. Either way this creates problems for senders and recipients alike.
Email is a Problem, Some Swear
Take reporter-turned-VC, MG Siegler, whose delicious rant, “Still F*cking Hate Email” leaves no ambiguity about how he feels. Instant classic. Some of the issues he describes, especially on mobile, are being addressed, but we collectively have a long way to go. New York Times reporter Nick Bilton recently took a different tact, declaring email bankruptcy by deleting over 40,000 unread emails with the stroke of a key. Bilton elegantly summed up the conundrum: “Am I a bad guy for ignoring those emails? Or are the senders somehow at fault? Probably a bit of both.”
Fred Wilson, a particularly thoughtful VC, provides tips on how to get your emails read by him. When your recipient’s inbox looks like fast-moving white water rapids, getting your email noticed can be nearly impossible.
Things Always Can Get Worse
If email is a problem for professionals, then it’s a growing one. According to The Radicati Group, the majority of the world’s email traffic comes from business accounts, which drive over 108 billion emails sent and received per day. By 2018, this volume will have grown by nearly 30% to roughly 140 billion emails sent and received per day.
And then there’s mobile. Already, there are more than 1.1 billion mobile email users around the world today. By 2018, this number will double to approximately 2.2 billion. About half of all people now handle email on their mobile phones. Returning to the wisdom of Fred Wilson, he explains how the problem of email simply gets worse on mobile. “As much as I hate doing email on the web,” Fred writes, “it is worse on mobile. You have less screen real estate. Cutting and pasting is harder. Everything is harder.”
We Are a Noisy Bunch
Humans are social, and so we communicate. People like MG, Nick and Fred are in particularly high demand, and so they receive inordinately high volumes of email. I suspect they feel bad when they don’t get back to others because they don’t want to 1) appear rude b) miss out on opportunities and/or c) feel out of control. Not to mention that handling that much email likely feels like a never-ending battle. Does this mean that email is at fault? No. As the saying goes “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” And you, too, likely feel like you receive too much email. Studies show that the average professional spends about a quarter of her time dealing with email at work everyday. So, email is noisy because human beings are noisy.
The collective body of email generated by the working population is staggering, and you help generate it. The many requests for information, meetings, and the like, flood the inboxes of colleagues, prospects and others whom you seek to reach. It’s easy to send an email asking for something, but often harder to satisfy the request. ‘Did you get this?’ ‘Did you do this?’ That’s part of email noise. Asking Fred ‘did you get my pitch?’ five times is email noise. Like lowering your carbon footprint, you can reduce your email footprint. If you don’t want to do it for Fred, then do it for your colleagues. Do it for yourself.
Here are five ways we can reduce the collective noise in our inboxes.
- Don’t Play Roll Call
The “reply all” button is a catalyst for endless, empty conversation. Replying all without adding value to the conversation is a great way to fill up inboxes and look busy, but a bad way to get real work done. So don’t be the person who just “checks in” on every conversation thread, just to confirm you received an email or to agree with your superiors. You’ll look like a schmoozer instead of a productive professional, and you’ll waste others’ time in addition to your own. Instead, stay out of endless chains as much as possible.
2. Don’t Be a Free Rider
Free riding is an economic principle that covers enjoying a communal public good without sharing the cost — dodging taxes but relaxing in taxpayer-funded Golden Gate Park, for example, or driving on city streets without paying the communal costs of pollution. Email has a similar problem, in that unnecessary emails reduce the shared value of email as a tool, but don’t cost individuals anything to send. To stop the “free rider” problem, think about having to “pay” for every email you send by adding something of value to the conversation. This will help you maintain the integrity of email as a public good.
3. Think About Your Email “Footprint”
Many workplaces have email footers that discourage printing emails. But how about discouraging people from sending emails? Spam emails have an environmental impact equivalent to driving around the world 2 million times, and data centers use about 1.1 to 1.5 percent of all energy globally — while using just 6 to 12 percent of the electricity they consume to do the work, with the rest going to keeping servers up and running even when unused. So next time you’re tempted to email, consider whether the message you’re sending really needs to be stored forever on an air conditioned server farm somewhere. If the answer is no, wait until you have something more important to say.
4. Speak Up
When there’s an issue at hand that could be potentially sensitive, sticky, or just confusing, consider picking up the phone or having an in-person conversation instead. This can save a ton of emails and time for everyone involved, as well as be a conduit for better professional relationships.
5. Act Like You’re Always On the Go
There are several ways to be more productive on your phone with gestures, voice controls, and other neat tricks. But sometimes it’s good to use your phone as a constraint. Just like scientists work within tight rules about what chemicals they can combine, try constraining yourself to responding only to emails on mobile, or with only a sentence or two. You might be surprised by how many messages you forego — and how productive you become.
Write Less to Read Less
Email is growing, and it’s going mobile. People are noisy and our inboxes are overrun. If we all do our part, we can help reduce the collective crush of emails that pins us down in our working lives. If we write less, and more thoughtfully, we may find ourselves having to collectively read less. Do it for your colleagues. Do it for yourself.
