Sunday, April 22, 2012
Email is not broken, we are.
Joshua Lyman.com: There seems to be a constant flow of “email is/is not broken” articles on HN and various other places. Some of them are very business-oriented, and some of them are scathing rejections (language). But most of them miss the point. Email as a system is not broken, but we, through our email behaviors, are broken.
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12 comments:
This is a really insightful article on the nature of e-mail and how we all treat it. It's very true that some of us (especially here at CMU) check e-mail constantly to try and stay up to date on what's going on around the school, with productions, etc. I think that has created this idea that we need to immediately reply to e-mails when they are sent our way. While I believe that responding to e-mails in a timely manner is important, I'm very much against being married to our machines and immediately replying to e-mails. It can be very detrimental to doing work when you have an e-mail distracting you once in a while, rather than having times during the day where you just deal with e-mail and respond to them. Since e-mail has become intertwined with our phones now, it has become a means of getting a hold of us quickly, but that's not really what it's meant for. E-mail is about sending messages that a person can deal with at their own rate, not about getting a hold of someone immediately. That's what phone calls are for.
Reading this article, which I agree is very insightfully written, made me think about why exactly I love email.
1) It's in writing! I frequently have trouble remembering the details of conversations, and being able to have an exchange entirely transcripted has saved me innumerable times. Yes, I could take notes when I'm having conversations, but I personally find it very hard to listen, absorb, and contribute to a conversation, while also trying to take coherent notes.
2) I can better communicate the thoughts that I am trying to share. I tend to not communicate as clearly as I should be able to verbally. That's not from a lack of clarity in my own mind, but from a lack of instant-recall vocabulary. Maybe this is a problem other people don't have, but I find being able to think, formulate and most importantly DELETE my thoughts before sharing them to be incredibly helpful for avoiding confusion.
I'm not quite sure whether these observations speak more to my failings as a human or to the successes of email, but there we go. I think in discussing whether or not email is "broken," we have to really nail down what it was initially designed to do.
Yes indeed. Our world has become inundated with computers, and with instant messaging, Facebook chat, and texting. Everything is an instantaneous conversation. We feel like we are maximizing efficiency by having everything now but really we are just creating more work for ourselves. I like the only idea that one is only allowed to check email 2 or 3 times a day. I know getting a smart phone has allowed me to check email much more quickly but then just makes me frustrated because I then have to deal with the emails I am given. Email is an uphill battle but I think in the long run it is a useful tool.
I agree with this article, although I've yet to come across an "email is broken and is email's fault" article he alludes to. I don't feel like it's necessarily bad to have email alerts, if one deals with them properly. Glance at phone, see subject line is spam, put phone back in pocket. Or simply ignore your phone if you're doing something important. I think the majority of people with phone notifications will ignore them when it's appropriate to do so. The more important point, to me, is people using email for things email isn't the best for, such as the urgent-notice scenario. In this case, I agree with the author that we have bad habits. If something is urgent, you can't assume the person you need to contact is in front of their computer, or will read your email right away even if they are. Phone calls are much better for that situation. You not only get the information across faster and easier, you KNOW that they received it.
While this article specfically points out how email has got us tied down to out browsers and phones, I think that this is a gross exaggeration. Yes, while I often times have my gmail browswer up or my push notifications on on my phone, the likely hood of me looking at it within the first few minutes of recieving it, is very low. The reason I find it so useful is because often times, I am expecting a specific response to a question pertainning to something I could be working on. By having that, it informs me of an email that allows me to be more productive on a given task. On the other hand howeveri find the fact that checking it often is quite important. Too many times, especially in the theatrical industry, a quick response is essential for decisions that need to be made. Far to often I have been in a situation in which I need a response quickly, and itliterally takes days to revieve an email back, and I feel bad, but thier imput was not imput into the decision making because they did not respond.
Lindsay is sooo correct in saying the lovely thing about emails is that once you have read them you can still go back and check them again! I never used email before coming to CMU. I was shocked, and frankly pretty scared, when I discovered that practically all communication at CMU (especially SOD) was via email. That being said, I instantly became addicted. It's almost become a Facebook level of addiction to me now. No email equals a saddened lady. It shouldnt be that way. Perhaps i will try to work on it.
E-mails are a great platform to distribute information. They are fast, but not time sensitive. They are available to everyone. They are (or at least can be) a permanent record of written information. They are easy to use. It's absurd to me when someone doesn't find those things to be true. This article is correct in it's evaluation of how e-mail is misused, but that is so so easy to correct. I don't believe in the death of e-mail. I do believe that people should learn to use it efficiently and I believe it will evolve to be more efficient on its own.
I agree with some of these suggestions but I think for them to work this suggestions need to become common process for not just you but for others as well. It is hard to regulate peoples reply time. I think that it is difficult to “fix” email when it is a general attitude of society. It is possible that it can be changed but it will take time and a lot of people working together in order to fix this problem. Because of computers and the internet our society has become accustomed to instant gratification and sometimes that is just not possible.
While this article is almost certainly right, I wouldn’t say that it is particularly insightful. I have personally noticed that since getting email on my phone I have gotten much better at opening and reading the first few sentences of every email I receive, and much worse at actually reading through full messages, responding to, and organizing emails. A much better strategy is to actually sit down several times a day and actually deal with all of the email you have accumulated in the past however many hours. I really like that this article calls attention to the different expectations that people have for how email should work. Getting on the same page with email response time, length, and format can save a lot of frustration. For example it is important to know if the person you are working with expects emails to be answered immediately so that you can work together effectively.
For some further amusement on this article, here's a handy guide for if you should check your e-mail or not: Flowchart for Checking E-mail
So maybe we're just using e-mail to procrastinate? That'd be a surprise...
I never checked my email until I came to college. Now I live by it. My mom laughed the other day when I told her not to text me anymore if she wanted to talk, to just email me and ask how my day is going. But its true! Email is critical on campus. Responding rapidly to an email can mean a potential difference of 10-12 hours of work a week for one of my jobs. Regardless, email has been abused through the years as it has grown and developed. Now in fact I usually assume email is spam unless its subject line or sending address grabs my attention. But I cannot turn of desktop alerts or any of the social tips this article provides because a majority of my email, yes I receive more than Ari's 50+ daily emails, actually mean something and have an urgent purpose to my day.
This is a very significant topic to the community of Carnegie Mellon. David Holcomb told us in orientation that this school runs on e-mail and for the most part, that is true. This school also gets horribly bogged down by e-mail. I'm excited to hear David Holcomb's lecture this week on managing our e-mail. I know it can be very consuming, ask my mother-in-law. Whereas I understand Lindsay's sentiments I disagree a bit. What I like most about e-mail is its efficiency and convenience. I don't have to call people and exchange pleasantries to get information that i want,I can ask them more simply in e-mail and being able to choose my words carefully. What I like most of all is to be able to sit at my desk at 3am and do a lot of communication without having to interrupt anybody else's work flow. In the future (because it has already begun) e-mail and text messages will be the same thing –that is the next evolution.
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