All Email is Spam
by Samuel Greengard Right now, I'm trying to escape inbox hell. My e-mail inbox is teetering north of 3,600 items and I feel like it has become a cancer growth. Normally, I try to file messages as they arrive and keep it down to about 50-100 items. But thanks to a vacation, a few business days out of the office, a heavy workload, kids and sundry life events it's recently emerged as the creature from the electronic lagoon. A couple of weeks ago I blogged about poorly designed marketing methods and how they create mental clutter and short-circuit the companies sending the messages. Since then, my thinking has evolved. I've come to the conclusion that virtually all e-mail is spam. Frankly, I'm exhausted. More than 200 e-mails a day has become a crushing burden. Unfortunately, as it so often happens, the solution has become the problem. Think about how frequently this occurs. Some spiffy new technology comes along and the world goes gaga over it. Adoption soars and everyone gushes over its value. E-mail was and still is revolutionary. You can send a message--along with actual documents, photos, you name it--to someone on the other side of the world. They receive it instantly. Geez, 100 years ago it took weeks or months to get a simple letter to someone far away. Twenty years ago, you had to pop the document into a pouch and pay FedEx to fly it there overnight. The problem is that too much of a good thing isn't good. Everyone now depends on e-mail to trim costs and reduce mailing expenses. However, when the entire world uses the same technology it ceases to be a competitive advantage. It's simply a baseline for doing business and, essentially, just another step in the staircase. Meanwhile, innovators look for new ways to break through the clutter. So, we're on to the next solution that will eventually become a problem. Here we go round the merry-go-round! It's a ride that doesn't switch off. Instant messaging seemed so wonderful initially because you could break through the clutter of e-mail and reach someone faster. But then you started getting pinged 17 times per hour and you probably found yourself cursing under your breath because you couldn't get any work done. Ditto for text messaging, Skype, Twitter and just about every other so-called communications "solution". As for me, I'm clicking the "unsubscribe" link every chance I get. I'll somehow survive without all the newsletters, press releases, merchant ads and charitable requests. And, while I'm at it, I'm switching off IM. An inability to control the technology means that it controls you. At some point one has to wonder if constantly running faster and covering more territory translates into any kind of improvement. The inbox doesn't lie. |
Comments (5)
At the great risk of sounding commercial, I recommend reading The Hamster Revolution: Managing Your Email Before It Manages You.
It changed my life and I joined the company that wrote it and provides training on its precepts.
Simple behavioral changes and a few tech tricks will reduce your email volume and time spent on it by 20 percent.
The book is all you need personally, but the training is useful for teams and enterprises.
Posted by Bill Kirwin | August 20, 2010 10:07 AM
Mr. ED Cone,
I agree up to a point. Most emails are junk.
But tech newsletters maybe not. You take baseline
is it junk mail like the others too? You would not be getting this post from me, if I told hotmail it's junk. Now my isp, centurytel/centurylink they so far has made that email box into a black hole. they spam all my mail there. this is why I use hotmail, to get baseline mags new letters. So not all emails are junk.
Posted by Mike | August 20, 2010 11:11 AM
You're right, Ed, the Unsubscribe shuffle is never-ending, but necessary, just as junk mail providers still have to be called and reminded that they're wasting their postage and our trees.
Part of the solution is to have more than one email address for any one part of your life. For example, have one you actually put on your email sig and hand out to the world, and one that only those people you want to communicate with will know. With single-inbox email systems, you won't know the difference - but you can route junk from one address using a different set of rules, or even put it in a folder to deal with only if you have time (that's what I do).
As a last resort, if you won't care about communicating with a company again, get and use a disposable email address. These are inexpensive services that invisibly route your mail from their "throwaway" address (ex: fox94821kk42hj@trashmail.net) to your real email address, without the sender knowing your "digits".
Lastly, though, is a lesson in multitasking. Those people who have grown up with a cell phone in one hand and a game controller in the other know what I'm talking about: email is not an interruption, just another blip in the information stream. Dealing with email is a quick task-switch: flip to email, open and read, then triage the mail (deal with now, later, or not), then act, and switch back to the original task. It's all about keeping multiple tasks (call them threads, if you're a programmer) in your head at one time. This skill isn't limited to people who've never leased a Trimline phone from Ma Bell, though: anyone can learn by just practicing. With 200 emails a day, you should get really good at it really soon.
Posted by Fred Bourdelier | August 23, 2010 10:02 AM
I agree it's a matter of managing the content coming at you rather than totally opting out.
Every communication method Greengard mentions requires periodic weeding through to make sure it's still useful.
In Twitter, you can create lists of people you consider value people. Then you can just focus on them by just using the list instead of your general feed. Way better than saying "Twitter Sucks" and avoiding it.
IM is a life saving during my work day. I have control over who can contact me and how I get the alerts.
If you feel like you are getting overly pinged, there's a good chance you are not communicating well. So what could have been a 30 second conversation turns into multiple emails, phone calls, IMs and dropping by your office.
Posted by devans00 | August 23, 2010 1:54 PM
Fred's suggestion is good, but not the last resort. We have developed a product that helps you to route messages to the appropriate channel - your email inbox being just one of them.
Many of those newsletters, deals, account updates etc., can be routed to appropriate smart-phone applications or social channels (like Facebook, Twitter, MSN Live Messenger, RSS or SMS) and away from your inbox.
We believe that this will significantly reduce email overload and route the right information to the right place.
Our product is called big time Pulse and we're just launching with three well-known Canadian brands.
Don't worry, Ed, help is on the way!
-Ameet
Posted by Ameet | August 24, 2010 8:41 AM