There was a time in the dark ages, the period before Napster (the first Napster, not the subscription sell out version we have today), when the world was introduced to email and our heads spun with the limitless communication possibilities it held. How could it be that we could actually send a message and communicated in nearly real time to people all over the world for free? No longer would we be slaves to the postal service and the phone companies. No more birthday cards lost in your car for months because you didn't have a stamp on you. No more watching the clock while you talked to Gramma because the call was costing you a second mortgage. This was a new world where we would stay in contact with friends and family like they were living next door. We could become more efficient and productive as email would streamline our workplace communication. Imagine the time we would gain as email freed us from walking around and having to talk to people individually. Now we could make a mail list and send out a memo to as many people as we wanted. We were giddy as we thought of the great things we could accomplish with this gift of reclaimed time that email would give us.
Now as we are into the second decade of commercial, global email we have become slaves to email, not using it for meaningful exchanges with those people distant but important to us. Instead, we spend our days shifting through mailboxes stuffed with messages from the person down the hall (who you haven't actually spoke to in months, I think his name is Pat, or maybe that is the lady in the room downstairs). The vast majority of theses messages don't actually apply to you but you haven't been taken off the 45 person mail list created 3 years ago so you not only get the original message but then 44 other messages from people replying with things like "Ok", "Thanks" or "Sounds, good". Then of course there is the very hilarious "forwarded" messages from people you have never met but they somehow intercepted a message with your email address on it and thought that you would enjoy the dancing monkey with the erection (OK, that was actually a good one). By this time you haven't even began to deal with the 14 messages questioning your manhood, girth and stamina (not mine of course, I don't get those, its like they know) and the 12 more messages pleading for financial assistance or offering you a chance at a guaranteed millions (if only these people could get together). By the time we have sorted through all of these messages we don't actually have any time or energy to read, let alone respond to the messages from people you care about. Then just as you are about to close your mailbox up pops a new message introducing a new workplace policy that seems to counter the last memo on the same subject and confuses and angers you so know you have to spend the next half hour figuring out what the hell is going on only to find out that the message was sent in error by some one new who didn't know a previous email had gone out a day earlier on the same subject by the guy in the next office. It is about this time that we begin to wish that email would just disappear so.........
I am challenging you all to take back your in boxes and free yourselves from the bonds of meaningless email.
For one week:
- Do not email anyone within a 5 minute walking distance or yourself (just go talk to them).
- Do not respond to an email unless it specifically asks you a question.
- Do not send a email as a way to avoid talking with someone.
- Do not send an email that you know will upset someone (if you are going to piss someone off have the courtesy to do it in person).
- Do not forward any email to an address that you cannot identify.
- Do not read any messages from an address you cannot identify (just delete them don't let your curiosity get to you)
- If you are part of a mail list that you don't want to be email the sender and ask to be removed.
- Check your own mail lists to ensure accuracy
- Send at least one email to someone meaningful in your life with whom you have lost contact with (even better call them if you can).
- Do not spend more time on your email in a day then you do talking to someone who is important to you.
