[31835843]

That is until the inflation forces a shift to another medium of higher value. It goes like this at my work: email -> Slack -> Meeting invite > Text Message(!) -> phone call (!!). If it gets to a phone call it better be the CEO stuck in a well and I’m the only person limber enough to pull him out, otherwise I’m just going to be mad.

[throw10920]

Still a tragedy of the commons situation. Slack, text messages, and phone calls are more synchronous media that demand more attention from the recipient - attention which you usually have no right to ask for - and escalation of everyone using email to Slack/meeting invite/text/phone call is worse off for everyone.

[31835843]

Agreed. I wish I knew what the solution was. I used to be very anxious about following up on everything. But burn out has made me more resigned to the fact that it’s just impossible

[throw10920]

I haven't found a way of fixing this problem individually - I believe that the only solution is systemic/cultural, where the work culture has to change to one where initiators of communication are more restrained and receivers are more diligent about following up.

I believe that the fact that senders are trigger-happy and receivers aren't great at reading suggests that the root problem behind both symptoms is that both groups don't value the time of others very well, which would explain both sides of the problem - although I'm open to alternative explanations.

[sokoloff]

One issue is there’s no active signal of current load on your communications partner.

If I’m visibly on the phone or you get a busy signal, you know I’m tied up. If you fire off an email, you can’t know if yours is one of two or one of two-thousand emails I have to process.

If I’m overloaded, there are emails that I won’t get to, pretty nearly by the definition of overloaded. If I’m overloaded and you have no signal of that, it’s not likely to go well for our communications, but doesn’t (necessarily) mean that I devalue your time.

[bogeholm]

> One issue is there’s no active signal of current load on your communications partner.

How about something like this: for every 25 unread emails in the recipient’s inbox, the sender needs to hold down the ‘Send’ button for an additional second

[sokoloff]

To send me a gmail right now, you'd have to hold send for a little over 3 minutes. To send me a work email right now, you'd have to hold it for almost 20 minutes. Works for me! :)

(Of course, you can't know the actual destination mailbox [nor its contents] at the time of sending the email [forwarders, mailing lists, not wanting to leak information, etc]).

[ErrantX]

The most important productivity tool I have is ignoring people.

90% of messages/requests I don't need to explicitly action (probably 80% of slack messages are followed an hour later by "oh I figured out the answer").

The 10% will follow up.

[beckingz]

Why does this happen?

I just don't understand it.

[ErrantX]

Human nature; if you have a problem there is a linear scale of effort:

1. Do I just know the answer 2. Can I trivially find the answer in under 10s 3. Who will know the answer? 4. What research will it take to learn the answer