Did You Unplug?

 

A couple of days ago I wrote about No Email Day. Are you plugged into email today? Have you turned off your email client?

I have to admit, when I arrived at the office today, I was giving some serious consideration to avoiding my inbox. However, I couldn't help myself and had to check. I read a few emails and decided that I would read my inbound mail, but not use email to answer anyone. That lasted for all of about 10 minutes.

Needless to say, I hang my head in shame.

Although email is 40 years old, we've got to give credit to the designers who came up with it. I did a little research this morning looking for someone to give credit to, but was only able to find the name of Ray Tomlinson. He's credited with originating the idea of the "@" as a separator for email addresses. I can't think of anything in tech that has lasted as long or been as effective as email.

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with my email. It sometimes seems to get me into trouble. Even when I don't have my laptop open, my iPhone gives me access to my email (all four email addresses). This isn't always a good thing.

Sometimes at night when my wife and I are watching a movie, having a conversation or even out someplace eating dinner, she'll hear the phone go off and glare at me. I can see it in her face, "Are you going to see what that is? Or pay attention to me?"

Although I try to leave the thing alone, I've been programed. I'm able to be strong and ignore the first couple of alerts, but after the third or fourth alert, I can't help myself—I've got to check. I know I have a problem.

When I was younger I was able to better compartmentalize my life. Work was work and after work was after work. Today, work and non-work seem to be divided by a very fuzzy line that allows work and non-work to often share the same space at the same time. This has to be detrimental to the space-time continuum or something, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. Most of my colleagues and friends seem to be connected 24/7. At least I never have a hard time getting a hold of anyone.

I'm still asking the question though, as great a tool as email is—is it the best tool for teams to to use for communicating and collaborating? My team often rolls their eyes at the email threads I missed because of the sorting that goes on every day in my email inbox. We all do it: What can wait? What can be ignored? What can be discarded? And, what do I have to deal with now? Email is a great tool, but the volume of mail most of us get every day makes managing the inbox a significant investment for a lot of people.

I feel better now.

What are you doing to leverage email more effectively? Are you doing something else? And, have you turned your email off today? Or like me, do you feel you're standing in front of a room full of people saying, "Hi, my name is Ty. I have an email problem."