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'No, You Can't Ignore Email. It's Rude.' (nytimes.com)
Yes, we're all overwhelmed with email. One recent survey suggested that the average American's inbox has 199 unread messages. But volume isn't an excuse for not replying. Ignoring email is an act of incivility, reads an opinion piece. From the story: "I'm too busy to answer your email" really means "Your email is not a priority for me right now." That's a popular justification for neglecting your inbox: It's full of other people's priorities. But there's a growing body of evidence that if you care about being good at your job, your inbox should be a priority. When researchers compiled a huge database of the digital habits of teams at Microsoft, they found that the clearest warning sign of an ineffective manager was being slow to answer emails. Responding in a timely manner shows that you are conscientious -- organized, dependable and hardworking. And that matters. In a comprehensive analysis of people in hundreds of occupations, conscientiousness was the single best personality predictor of job performance. (It turns out that people who are rude online tend to be rude offline, too.)
I'm not saying you have to answer every email. Your brain is not just sitting there waiting to be picked. If senders aren't considerate enough to do their homework and ask a question you're qualified to answer, you don't owe them anything back. How do you know if an email you've received -- or even more important, one you're considering writing -- doesn't deserve a response? After all, sending an inappropriate email can be as rude as ignoring a polite one. [...] Whatever boundaries you choose, don't abandon your inbox altogether. Not answering emails today is like refusing to take phone calls in the 1990s or ignoring letters in the 1950s. Email is not household clutter and you're not Marie Kondo. Ping!
I'm not saying you have to answer every email. Your brain is not just sitting there waiting to be picked. If senders aren't considerate enough to do their homework and ask a question you're qualified to answer, you don't owe them anything back. How do you know if an email you've received -- or even more important, one you're considering writing -- doesn't deserve a response? After all, sending an inappropriate email can be as rude as ignoring a polite one. [...] Whatever boundaries you choose, don't abandon your inbox altogether. Not answering emails today is like refusing to take phone calls in the 1990s or ignoring letters in the 1950s. Email is not household clutter and you're not Marie Kondo. Ping!
199 unread emails? Not me.
I must be doing something right, or are they doing something wrong?
Let me correct the thinking in the title here. "Yes I can. No it isn't." There we go.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
If you want me to reliably respond to email, the first step is to pass a law declaring open season on spammers, with a bounty of $1,000 per head, and arm everybody in the world with shotguns. :-)
I would be thrilled to have only 199 unread email messages. In fact, I have 3,592 unread email messages, despite numerous attempts to blacklist spammers, bulk delete spam, unsubscribe from various email lists that companies have put me on without my consent, etc. The volume of garbage is so extreme relative to the actual signal that I've just about given up on email entirely. I try to catch important emails from people I know, but I make no guarantees. The odds of an email never even being noticed until it is too late are probably at least 30% at this point.
Heck, lately, the spam has been coming more and more from our own federal government, whose "We the People" website makes no attempts to validate email addresses whatsoever, resulting in some weeks getting dozens of "Thank You For Your Message" reports from an email alias that I have never used or given out publicly (same username, different well-known hostname). When even the federal IT department can't avoid being part of the problem, it's time to give up on the entire delivery system.
The same is also true for the telephone. When I get calls, unless the number is one that I recognize, I do not answer. Ever. If anybody wants to reach me, they can either:
All other delivery methods are on a best-effort basis, and should be considered unreliable, at best.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The whole business of developing etiquette from scratch in the age of electronic communications is interesting as hell. It used to be that people thought of email as a typical letter, delivered nearly as slowly as actual physical mail. Now it is merely the world's slowest form of instant message.
One skill needed for effective management is good organization.
An overflowing inbox is a sign of difficulty with this skill.
How hard is it to "archive"? You don't have to have a fancy folder structure. Most email applications today have an "archive" feature.
If you can't deal with it now, send a quick note saying you can't, and move on. Then archive the email.
I read/reply to email if and when I want to. Same goes for text messages and voice mails.
It's my device and my time and I will use them as I please.
If you want something from me, send me an email. I'll read it during work hours, maybe today, maybe tomorrow.
If you need me to read it faster, send me an SMS. I'll read it in an hour if I am not sleeping.
If you need something from me RIGHT NOW, call me. As a bonus, you will know immediately whether I can talk to you right now and whether I now know about your problem.
Email conversation is slow, even if I reply you instantly, you will probably take some time to reply, which will stretch out our conversation (say, 5 emails each) to a whole day or maybe two days. So, if you are writing an email, then it is not that urgent to you.
I don't think a timely response is as important as one you have considered. Once it is out there, its gone and you can't take it back.
With email there is some time to respond, not immediately unless it really has to be that way.
When people see thought in the response it's a good sign you've considered what they had to say.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
An average of 199 unread messages and all of them unwanted newsletters and spam.
Get a better spam filter. I see a spam email less than once a week.
I’ve got one particular coworker who often emails me a question multiple times over the course of a few months - even though I have almost always already answered the question in a response to her first email. She loses track, and rather than checking whether I’ve already answered... asks the same question again.
Wasting my time with pointless emails like that is far ruder than me not responding with a third or fourth or fifth email containing information I’ve already sent more than once.
And yes, when I answer a repeat I do append the first message and point out that I did answer weeks ago... it doesn’t deter her. She is seriously vapid. Many of us wonder how she has held onto her job (and no, none of the things which probably have popped into your head there can explain this one).
#DeleteChrome
You don’t have a right to my time or attention unless we have an established social or business relationship. I have a pretty good multi-layer spam filtering system. That takes care of 90% of the incoming mail. It takes a few moments to highlight and permanently delete most of the rest a few times a day. That leaves a handful for me to actually read and sometimes reply. Damn, perhaps I am organized.
As far as I know 48 hours is the default time period to allow for an email recipient to respond.
"... you just have to answer mine. "
Would it be rude to simply assume the author's article is BS, and simply not read it? Asking for a troll.
It's prudent exactly because "I don't have time to read your email." translates to "Your email isn't a priority for me at this time.". Technically I do read all my email, at least as far as the sender and subject, but the first thing I'm looking for when I skim it is "Is this email relevant to something that's one of my priorities right now, and if so which one?". If it is, that email has the priority of whatever it's related to and I'll get to replying to it when my priorities permit. Which means if it's a low priority item I won't be working on for some time, don't expect a quick reply. If it's a high priority for you but not for me, either you or your manager need to stop bothering me and go talk to my manager about getting relative priorities adjusted (in fact this should've happened when the priority for the item was set, that this is coming up indicates a severe lack of communication on the part of one or more of the managers involved). I'll be happy to help bring it to my manager's attention, provide estimates on how quickly things can be done and what the effects of shuffling priorities will be, but don't expect me to go upending my priorities without my manager knowing about it and approving it. Note: bug reports already have a (really high) permanent place on my priority list and get a same-day or faster response (if nothing else, indicating how long I think it'll take to nail the cause down and get a handle on a fix). Regular updates on progress and ETA from me are required and I rarely miss sending them out so be really sure you've checked your folders and there really isn't a relevant update before bugging me about progress.
Personal email I handle on the same basis, and I feel absolutely no obligation to respond to email merely because you sent it to me. If I don't respond it's usually because either I don't know you and your email had nothing in it to interest me, or I know you and don't want to talk to you about whatever your email was about (or possibly at all, depending). The exceptions involve things like my being in the ICU in a coma, and if you're close enough friends to expect a response from me you're already on the list of people who'll get notified about things like that in some way.
Yes, I'm an old codger who refuses to be nickel-and-dimed to death by people wanting "just a few minutes of my time". Time is ultimately the only currency we have, and I'm as careful with it as I am with the dollars in my bank accounts. My friends understand this and we've worked out a mutually-acceptable balance. Failing to understand it, in turn, is one of the fastest known ways to get put into my twit filter.
I remember this conversation with an older worker and it struck me as sensible at the time and very wise now.
Without going full "four yorkshiremen *" on it...
Some years ago people sent typewritten memos; you could get 4, maybe 5 carbon copies if you were lucky - any more and a second copy needed to be typed. Result: you thought long and hard about what was said, kept it brief , and considered exactly to whom you would send the message - every addressee counted.
Then came the photocopier - you could easily send memos to 20, 30 people (more involved negotiation with the custodians of the copier and/or negotiations with the stationery dept.) - people were less rigorous about addressees and the volume of less relevant and less valuable info increased.
Then came email - the cost of sending to hundreds of people was minimal; it was quick and easy. Whilst increased communication helps the 'signal to noise' ratio took a nosedive and we got increasing volumes of decreasing quality messages.
Moving on from that conversation, we have social media where absolute crap is broadcast to the whole world and kept for eternity - but the majority of it is inane, inaccurate, disingenuous and unhelpful.
Seems like we have an analogue to the gas law:
Volume x Quality = Constant
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* Monty Python -- a classic sketch
An email is often a request that is all too easily fired off. Typing and sending an email is incredibly fast but the action required on the other end is considerable. And often the email is sent off without due diligence on the end of the sender, which is incredibly rude, not valuing the receiver's time. Often the sender will not even check their own email for the answer which has been sent time and again, but sender can't remember in short term memory so they fire off another email about "how do I do this again? What's the phone number again? Where can I find this again?"
There are many resources available but sender just thinks it's easier to send an email. It's like googling the human world to them. We've sometimes been so fed up we've even made detailed documents with the steps you need to follow and all of the possible contingencies but you can't find that either or be bothered to read can you?
So naturally the recipient would rather ignore the many requests and wait to be contacted through another medium, whether it be a voice call or in person, to follow through, as a form of vetting.
Fuck off with your shaming.
Twinstiq, game news
To the person who sends me 5 emails before I arrive in the office each morning, along with immediately followup "did you get this?" --- yes I'm ignoring you. I have other things to do. You send too much email and you're pushy.
Many times I don't respond to an email because I'm stuck. I don't have an answer to the question asked and my only response would be "I don't know what next steps are." And many times the problem takes care of itself before I respond or the issue is no longer an issue (only the important stuff gets done).
I used to work at a very large organization and the volume of email is incredible. People cc you just because. I would receive tons of email that was directed at no-one - directed at "the void." I didn't reply because there were 66 people on the To line - who owns it ? Not me. Thanks for the Notice.
But email to me I generally reply right away. Unless I knew to strategically delay my response because I was given other priorities. And I had a lot going on - so I only read email once every hour or so. It was like a FB/Twitter feed. There's always an update - so I batch processed email. Sorry that I couldn't Like your individual post. I have to prioritize thinking about your problem against my other tasks. Has anything changed in 50 years?!
And sometimes your problem just isn't important enough. suck it.
Agreed. My counterpoint to the article - don't send emails demanding other people's attention unless you have reason to believe that *they* would want to interact with you.
It's far more rude to carelessly demand someone else's attention in the first place than it is to ignore such demands. Attention is a precious resource, paying attention to something disrupts what I'm doing, and sacrifices a slice of my life that I can never get back.
If you do email me, be concise: tell me what you want, and why I should want to give it to you. And do so in as few words as possible because every word I read is costing me a moment of my life. Show that you respect my time and attention, or don't expect me to treat you with any greater respect.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.