Maybe E-mail Isn't Such a Great Idea, After All

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By Tom Regan, Christian Science Monitor

Ken Siegel doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't like e-mail.

"I don't even have an e-mail account," he says. "When I tell that to the executives I work with, first they look at me with surprise, and then they look at me with envy."

Dr. Siegel, a psychologist and president of Impact Group, management consultants in Los Angeles, is on a bit of a crusade. He wants there to be less e-mail in the world. So he's helping his business clients organize activities such as a "no e-mail Friday" in order to increase productivity.

That's right: increase productivity.

"E-mail is not a communication device, it's a broadcasting device," says Siegel. "It will actually truncate communication. And in the truest sense of the word, it has become a psychological dependency. We have convinced ourselves that we can't live without it."

E-mail takes up more and more of our time at work, according to Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif., research and consulting firm. E-mails sent by a company's workers are projected to increase 27 percent this year, to an average of 47 a day -- up from 37 a day in 2006. And that's not the upper ranks of a company, where even more e-mails can accumulate.

The question then becomes "Do we really want our company to be spending so much of its time doing something that ultimately isn't productive?"

But how can we live without it?

Take, for example, my full-time job at National Public Radio. I get e-mails nonstop all day long: e-mails about stories, e-mails from human resources, e-mails about people looking for lost Blackberrys or books that they left in a recording booth, e-mails purportedly from high-ranking folks in Nigeria who want to give me lots of money, e-mail about ... You get the picture.

I can almost hear Siegel smiling on the phone as I recite this litany. He's obviously heard this before. "And how many of those e-mails are you really glad you got?"

Truthfully? Not all of them, for sure.

That's his point exactly. Siegel says people need to consider how much e-mail adds "to the value of their days." Most of the executives he works with say they spend two to three hours a day on e-mail (about 150 to 250 messages) and on average only 16 to 19 percent of those messages met the value-added criterion.

Siegel is also blunt about another use for e-mail.

"E-mail has become the 21st century's 'cover your butt' technique of choice," he says. "It's also become the interpersonal coward's device of choice."

People will send e-mail as a way to avoid dealing with an issue, by pointedly not dealing with it in a quick, prompt manner, he says. If you have a problem that needs to be solved quickly, e-mail is almost always the worst way to approach that solution.

And the problem has grown worse as more and more businesses expect employees to use personal digital assistants such as Blackberrys and Treos. Once upon a time, we only had to worry about e-mail when we were at our desks. Now it follows us around, virtually tugging at our sleeves, demanding that we pay attention.

When Siegel works with business executives, he tries to give them strategies to tame the digital beast and get more value from their work.

Thus "No e-mail Fridays" were born. But it was not a painless birth for many who tried it. In a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, training and consulting firm, supported the idea of no e-mail one day a week. But she included a warning: "When you try to take e-mail away from some users, they're going to panic."

Panic? I would expect riots.

Ever seen people with their Blackberrys? It's like watching Pavlov's dog. The moment the stimulus is given (an e-mail arrives), the response is provoked: "Must answer now!"

Siegel agrees that it's not easy. But the benefit, he says, is -- yes -- increased productivity once you get over those initial panic attacks.

Siegel says once people can't rely on e-mail, problems are solved more quickly. An e-mail string that might bounce back and forth in six to 12 messages over a day or two sometimes can be solved with a 10-minute face-to-face meeting. And that face-to-face thing actually improves relationships.

Siegel offers other ideas. One executive he worked with started blocking all messages on which he was cc'd. After a while, people realized that if they wanted this executive to help solve an issue, they would have to talk to him in person.

Siegel knows that e-mail is a part of our working world now, and there's no turning back. But he also believes that it's time we grabbed the e-mail bull by its horns and wrestle it into submission. E-mail should not dictate how we operate at work, or even at home, he says.

"E-mail is a tool with clear and viable uses and benefits," Siegel concludes. "Communication isn't one of them. Businesses and individuals need to set guidelines when it should be used and when it shouldn't be used. And we'll all be better off once we do it."

Tom Regan is a columnist for The Christian Science Monitor.

[Toshtishtash 1]

I take it he has never been in a long distance relationship then

[Nessa 23]

if I could I'd only communicate with my co-workers through e-mail. Every time I have the chance I e-mail instead of calling.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I take it he has never been in a long distance relationship then

I don't know. For us, emails were never a big part of communication. Neither one of us were crazy about writing or reading long emails because it's like having a one-sided conversation.

[Toshtishtash 1]

I take it he has never been in a long distance relationship then

I don't know. For us, emails were never a big part of communication. Neither one of us were crazy about writing or reading long emails because it's like having a one-sided conversation.

We don't email these days as Chris doesn't have regular access to a computer, but when we first got together... In fact for the whole first year, that was our main source of communication. We used to email about 20 times a day. I actually think this is how we got to know eachother so well. I'm not saying that we wouldn't have done without it, but it just made the whole thing a whole lot easier. I liked it!

Now we just spend 4 hours a day on the phone..... Which gets a bit expensive!

[sj5 4]

Phone is my favorite tool of communication. Edited October 18, 2007 by SJ

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I take it he has never been in a long distance relationship then

I don't know. For us, emails were never a big part of communication. Neither one of us were crazy about writing or reading long emails because it's like having a one-sided conversation.

We don't email these days as Chris doesn't have regular access to a computer, but when we first got together... In fact for the whole first year, that was our main source of communication. We used to email about 20 times a day. I actually think this is how we got to know eachother so well. I'm not saying that we wouldn't have done without it, but it just made the whole thing a whole lot easier. I liked it!

Now we just spend 4 hours a day on the phone..... Which gets a bit expensive!

That makes sense. I suppose the author of the article is basically saying that email is all that its cracked-up to be. I thought of getting a Blackberry at one point but then I thought it's not really necessary... not even remotely.

[Toshtishtash 1]

I suppose what he says is true in a way... There are a lot of people (myself included) that wonder what the hell they would do without it. But wouldn't that be the same for the internet in general?

I think email does have it's good points, but I suppose in a way it has made people lazy too.

[Ban Hammer 14,396]

i'd love to read the entire thread, but i gotta check my email.

[Toshtishtash 1]

i'd love to read the entire thread, but i gotta check my email.

[Peikko 1,575]

The people who use the email as some kind of prevarication tool or other time wasting device will find another way of prevaricating they did prior to email. Email is a useful way to communicate but people are still people.

[Jasman0717 9]

Hum, sounds like my brother. He was a clinical psychologist and hated computers. They always wanted him to enter his case notes using the computer but he absolutely refused and would just make the IT department scan in has hand written notes. He finally did get an email account at work. I have an email from him on the day he died that I read almost every day because I know the strength he had to use to break down and actually write an email

[jundp 191]

I suppose what he says is true in a way... There are a lot of people (myself included) that wonder what the hell they would do without it. But wouldn't that be the same for the internet in general?

I think email does have it's good points, but I suppose in a way it has made people lazy too.

So has IMing and SMSing. I have to actually re-teach high school seniors how to write full sentences and real words!!! So frustrating, but I have to say they are definitely unique in their communication

We use email but no longer as our main form of communication. That's phone or voice chat. But I'm like toshtishtash in that during our first year, we emailed constantly. We still have sort of a "rule" that we will make sure the other person gets to wake up to an email from the other person. Of course we have a 9 hour time difference, so there's usually some of the boring "here's what I did today" stuff. It's nice to share those things, even if they aren't monumental, especially as we both pretty much know the other's routine and so can envision it all.

As for work, though. I can happily pull the plug on email. I use it to communicate with the local heads of a service organization I advise and to people in the community or parents, but who has time while teaching to read/answer email?

[Alex+R 0]

Ha, the reason I'm awake right now is that my Blackberry was flashing at me that I had an e-mail. Argh.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

doh! wrong thread...

Edited October 20, 2007 by Mister Fancypants