[TeddyLondon]

Love this!

Basically work email is horrible, do all you can to stop it.

It creates individual silos of knowledge that only people included are party to, whenever someone leaves they take this with them (would you start a job and take on someone else's old mailbox, yuck!)

It drags people into work 24/7, especially in global organisations but also in 9-5 local time type places, yuck!

I've worked hard to get everyone at the start-up I work at to stop sending each other emails and use yammer instead - this has worked remarkably well especially among the techies.

Make your life better and do what you can to stop using email.

[lepton]

I'm really surprised at this attitude. What is fundamentally wrong with email, that I should do what I can to stop using it?

I prefer written communication since I find it more deliberate, and therefore more productive ultimately (more thought goes into writing than into a phone conversation; the pace is slower). Email lets me keep my written communication all in one place.

I can see how it would create silos; I try to be liberal in cc'ing others to avoid this and to be inclusive.

I don't understand how email drags people in to work in off-hours. I don't typically expect people to have access to work email off-hours, although I realize many do (myself included). For urgent questions yes, I'll pick up the phone.

To be clear, I get 100+ emails on a typical business day. I'm sure if you get a lot more, a different strategy might be necessary to manage them all.

[TeddyLondon]

I'll add to why I think it is so bad, there is so god damn much of it!

I am not trying to convert anyone but I would hate to get 100+ emails a day, how do you get anything else done?

Since Monday morning (all of Monday and 3/4 of Tuesday) I have had 21 emails, mostly I have been cc'd by customers and they are irrelevant for me.

For the out of work hours thing I have had a lot of emails out of hours and felt that I had to reply - I do accept that if I turn off emails out of work then I'm less likely to be dragged in out of work and maybe other people can read stuff and put it to the back of their minds or just ignore!

I really felt it liberating to stop receiving so much email, I highly recommend it!

[VLM]

"I would hate to get 100+ emails a day, how do you get anything else done?"

I run 200+ most days and a LONG time ago (decades ago) I set up three rule based inboxs or whatever you want to call it, the junk that I know is junk and will not look at unless I'm actively searching, could be important but probably isn't (more or less the default), and the real inbox which is very carefully filtered, only certain from addresses and certain subjects.

The name of the game is making as many rules as possible to permanently shovel junk out of your official inbox and as few rules as possible to shovel real content into your "real inbox"

To say people get personally offended if they are (in their incorrect opinion) miscategorized would be a profound understatement. Always pretend you're incompetent WRT email (I've only been using email on the internet since 1991, I'm a total noob, so sorry) and I have no idea how to write rules and regexes when confronted.

About 3/5 of emails I get I delete without looking at in one folder, 1/5 I just glance at the subject line in that folder about once a day (usually the morning) and then delete, and the remainder I actually care about enough to read. Of those I read, most are irrelevant read and delete. In terms of actual actionable items I get about one per weekday from email.

Is it "safe" to simply delete emails, unread? Sure. I honestly forget stuff occasionally, probably more often than I incorrectly delete email.

The more intense the CYA culture, the more emails are sent but the fewer are read. It inevitably converges on a blogging model where everyone could read what everyone else is doing, but no one actually reads anything because there's just too much. If you send an email you've proactively given yourself the opportunity to blame the victim, who doesn't like that?

[TeddyLondon]

"The name of the game is making as many rules as possible to permanently shovel junk out of your official inbox and as few rules as possible to shovel real content into your "real inbox"" - doesn't this just feel like your treading water?

"If you send an email you've proactively given yourself the opportunity to blame the victim, who doesn't like that?" - there is a lot to love in that, maybe I will fire up outlook!

[VLM]

"doesn't this just feel like your treading water?"

I've spent a fair amount of my programming career automating humans out of inhumane jobs, so if anything it feels like work to me, rather than treading water or grinding. Human beings shouldn't have to read a weekly email announcing Casual Jeans Day Is Friday every single week or whatever.

There is some grind game aspect to it. Some people grind their virtual farm production, I grind the minimization of my real email inbox. Some days I login and see I have no real emails at all. Cool!

[tomjen3]

IM is worse.

Frankly though, deal with it - because a phone call is even worse (if you have phones in the office anymore, I don't think I have).

[bnegreve]

What do you use instead?