[svnsets]

At the company I work for, email is only really used for the executive and HR teams to send mass communications to employees. Almost all communication between employees is done through Slack under the assumption that communication through messaging is asynchronous (meaning I or anyone else may see that I/we have been messaged, but can defer my/our response until it's convenient. This sort of communication model is important because it doesn't alienate our remote employees, and it doesn't derail the workflows of engineers/designers/managers/etc.

Anyways, I don't think it's appropriate to blame email in general for people's poor task management skills. The alternative to email and instant messaging is having someone physically walk over to your desk or call you in which case your current task is definitely going to be derailed.