Is it like the tree that falls in the forest? If nobody heard the crash, was that sound ever made?
Yesterday I got involved with a conversation on FaceBook about email and your inbox. Let’s get more specific. How about unread messages in your inbox? To your left is a partial screen shot of this conversation. I have “fuzzed” the names and faces to protect the innocent 🙂
One guy actually has close to 13,000 unread emails! Incredible! Another goes on to say that he has over 56,000 but does not specify how many of those are unread. He further states that “if it’s a month old and I haven’t read it and no one followed up or hollered, I delete it”. Another gentleman, not on this screen shot, basically said that if somebody wants to get ahold of them, they know to text or call. Certainly, this got me to thinking. Not only did it truly open my eyes to the real world, it also encouraged me to examine certain phenomena that has a tendency to piss me off real bad 🙂
I happen to be pretty fanatic about email. Not only do I live on it, and assuming that I have access to it, there will be no unread emails in my inbox when I shut off my computer and go to bed. None and never. That being said, I may receive 100 or less emails per day. If that number were say…. 1,000, how well would my present system work? Probably not so well. So, I’m going to ask some questions here and, since I don’t have any answers, most of them are going to be rhetorical.
- Why do you have an email address on your business card and on your contact information? Would it not be better to state the best way to get ahold of you and give instructions of how to best do that and of what to expect?
- I know this may be a stupid question but, I also know that there are tools out there to reduce your misery like Xobni, labels, filters, etc.. Have you investigated those?
- What message does it send your clients when you are unable to respond to, let alone read, their emails in a timely manner? I was discussing this topic with someone else recently and he had asked a similar question of someone who we both know. That person’s response was something to the effect that “Hey, they sent me the email. I didn’t ask for it.”
- How do you set reasonable expectations for those people who do email you? For that matter, do you at all?
- Would imposing certain communication conditions on your clients be a plus in your relationship with them, a minus, or a “who the hell cares!?” 🙂
- What does this condition say about email in general as a communication tool? Has it literally outgrown its usefulness?
- If the above is true, what is to take its place? Do we go back to the phone? Maybe Twitter and FaceBook? Text messaging? I honestly do not see Wave as being the answer. Seems to me to that Wave is not much more than a sophisticated email-like collaboration tool.
- The thing I like about email is that I can respond to it on my schedule. Would you be willing to give up that luxury to field text messages and phone calls? As far as that goes, I also like email’s “audit trail”.
I tend to be a little frustrated about all of this as I know that a large percentage of the emails that I send, and these are for valid and often very time-sensitive reasons, are: never read, rarely responded to, and when responded to are incomplete in that response. What would I do if I received 100’s of emails a day or even 1,000’s? Could I hold myself to the same expectations that I now have of others? What is the solution if there even is one? I know that this challenge is widespread. I also think that no amount of time management training can hope to solve it. Bummer 🙂
Thanks for visiting!
Craig
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