Fast Company: The very first email was sent in 1971. In the four decades since, these electronic messages have forever changed the way we communicate. Today, we're an email-dependent society, preferring to pound away a quick response on a smartphone rather than picking up the device to make a call. While we might openly complain about adding quantity to our inbox, there's a trend among my business colleagues of leaving voicemail messages that promptly explain that email is the best way to reach them.
8 comments:
This article is very interesting for several reasons. First of all, emailing is an essential tool to have in order to survive in today's world. Emailing, in many instances, is the basis of communication for designers and production teams that work from different locations around the country or world. Often times, emailing is the easiest way to contact a person in the theatre world because of the unpredictable nature of their schedule. This article points out a few interesting new ways to make this form of communication more effective and easier to use. The most helpful app to me is the Boomerang App. This app allows you to "boomerang" a message back to your email at a certain time if you are unable to respond to it when you first open it. With all of the new advancements in emailing and communication, there is no reason why an email should get lost in an inbox or be left without a response. This articles is well worth reading and the Boomerang is definitely an app that I will be downloading to help keep me organized!
I am definitely interested in the Boomerang App as well. That's the only thing on this list that really impresses me. But honestly, it doesn't strike me as all that different from Siri, or the other apps that exist to create 'reminders'. It would definitely be sweet to have my own inbox remind me of things that I need to do. But overall, this article more serves as a discouraging social commentary on the way our society functions. Email was created to make our lives easier and more convenient. And now, it has evolved in such a way that we are creating ways to make email easier, quicker, more efficient, etc...
I disagree with a lot of the suggestions this article makes. When I am checking my e-mails and reading what my coworkers have to say about a topic, I don't want to have to surf through their twitter and facebook updates in order to find the information I need. I feel this would make your e-mails look messy and less than professional.
I don't like my technology being smarter than I am. If I want to add someone to my address book, I want to put in the information I need. I don't want my e-mail doing things on its own that I may not necessarily want it to do.
As far as Boomerang goes, I feel like there are ways to remind yourself of e-mails without having to download, setup, and maintain another app. You can mark e-mails as unread in order to bring them to your attention. Gmail gives you the option of "starring" important e-mails and bringing them to the top of the your inbox where you are more likely to be able to find it. I, personally, keep a schedule/calendar with all of my reminders and appointments in it. When I get an e-mail that requires me to take action I simply write it down in my schedule and check that list when I have time to complete a task.
Everyone has their own system that works for them. I feel that the more apps you download to try to make things simpler, the more complicated it can actually make things.
I never knew the true value of email until I came to CMU. Now I hate it. Its not that I hate emailing itself. I hate how reliant I've become on it. I check my email at least a few times a day. Most of the time its filled with spam. The one tip in this article that really popped out at me was Boomerang. This device acts as a "to do" list of your email. Many times I find myself reading emails from teachers, telling myself I'll answer them later, and then forgetting about it. I need Boomerang in my life to keep my sanity (or a least a small part of it). Answer emails y'all!
While this is an interesting article, it was not quite as helpful as i was anticipating it to be. Although i do really like the idea of the boomerang app, it seems like it could just be a waste of money because you could just set an alert on your calendar for when you need to go back to the email. By far the best email advice I have ever received was from my dad who told me two things. First to make just one folder called Archives for information that i need to keep handy or "letters" from friends that i want to hold on to. The second was to treat my inbox like a too do list and delete emails that i have taken care of or no longer need to read. That has really helped me not let anything slide through the cracks which has become extremely important since coming to CMU. Email can often be a hassle due to its never ending stream, but it really is a fantastic way to communicate. Especially in the business/educational world were its nice to be able to go back and reread what someone wrote instead of possibly forgetting what exactly they had told you.
Here, I have agree with Jess. I don't want the technology I use to do my work being better at my work than I am. Would Boomerang [so far, seemingly the best of the five suggested in this article, if these and the article's own comments are to be believed] help me deal with emails I need to give more attention to on a semi-immediate basis? Likely. But why not just DEAL WITH IT then? Don't feel you have time? If you use Gmail you can assign a label to "archive" those emails you still need to deal with [something like, "Needs Attention"]. Or use the star functions. Gmail has a series of stars you can mark an email with to mean different things [I use the yellow exclamation point for messages that Need Attention]. You can use Filters and Multiple Inboxes in Gmail as well to display only these starred messages below your inbox so you can clearly see them and come back to them later.
Yes, this system might be more work than just downloading Boomerang and it did take me a little bit of time to set up and figure out and I'm still working out the bugs, but it also means *I'M* in control of my email [or FEEL more in control, at the least] and how I deal with it and not simply relying on yet ANOTHER app to do it for me.
Technology is great and all but I strongly feel we still need to be in control of it or pretty soon it'll be controlling our defense systems, starting WWIII and then pretty soon Arnold Schwarzenegger will be coming back in time to kill us.
And really, who wants that? Thanks, Boomerang. Thanks for the Apocalypse...
I agree with some of the other comment writers that sometimes adding all of these e-mail-related apps could slow you down in the end. I also think I sometimes am too reliant on checking e-mail really often throughout the day. Since we get so many e-mails and it's a crucial part of some assignments, CMU trains you to keep up with it naturally. I'd much prefer this over trying to use a bunch of apps. I also do the "Mark as Unread" often to highlight messages that require actions of me. No need to pay for an app to do that for me.
This has some great apps that would work great for me. The one that I am very interested in is Boomerang since I have a few times just forgotten about an email and then gotten another email for that person asking if I ever got it and then I feel embarrassed that I missed the email. The one that does the signatures seems to be very interesting but a lot of that branding you are able to do yourself with I mail. Other than the tweets thing but do you really want someone to know what you just tweeted. Also the one that links to Facebook and other social media to get the persons pictures and allows you to match a face to a name which is very helpful.
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