e-wot?

The Sydney Morning Herald has a good article on the dangers of email. Click for ‘Email becomes a dangerous distraction’smh.com.au

The article reports:

Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email

This adds up: we can waste as much as 8 1/2 hours a week if we answer our email as soon as we get it.

I like the reason they offer for why people might feel compelled to check their email every five minutes:

Tom Stafford, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, England, and co-author of the book Mind Hacks, believes that the same fundamental learning mechanisms that drive gambling addicts are also at work in email users. “Both slot machines and email follow something called a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’ which has been established as the way to train in the strongest habits,”

Well, it made me giggle.

Now I don’t get any pleasure from email at all. In fact, I avoid it as much as possible. But then maybe I’m just a Misanthrope.

This whole ‘dangers of email’ thing got me thinking about Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero idea: 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

Here’s his video (hour long Google talk about Inbox Zero)

Via Slashdot Slashdot | Why Email Has Become Dangerous

A new one for the dictionary, I hope.

Email bankruptcy = “when you are so inundated with email (both genuine and spam) that you have to delete everything and start over again”. from Urban Dictionary

Thanks to Philip Tan who introduced me to this new term. He sent me a copy of the following excellent article, in an envelope:

Click for Washington Post article on email bankruptcy

Here’s a list of people who’ve filed for email bankruptcy:

• Moby (musician) is taking a break from email for a year.
• Fred Wilson (venture capitalist) “I am so far behind on email that I’m declaring bankruptcy.”
• Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Stanford University professor and internet freedom-fighter) declared bankruptcy a few years ago, saying “I eventually got so far behind that I was either going to spend all my time answering emails, or I was going to do my job.”

No big surprise. Inevitable, I guess. Commercial spam aside, there are just too many emails where the writer has not thought to make the email relevant to the reader. Then the huge quantity of irrelevant emails reaches to the limit where the signal becomes noise and we cease to pay attention.

Tom Merritt, in a quick aside on a recent edition of CNet’s BuzzOutLoud podcast, also revealed that he was getting slower at handling his email replies. Not bankrupt yet though. I’m about the same. I’m notorious for not replying promptly: I now write my replies once a week, unless it’s urgent.

In case you need some advice… Lawrence Lessig explains how to declare email bankruptcy in Wired 14.08: How To: Be More Productive.