We, not technology, are the solutions to our own technological nightmares
Luis Suarez suggested something so strange, something almost heretical this weekend. He said we should use the phone and not email sometimes. Yes, I know, strange. Wait you mean I can use my Blackberry as a phone?
IBM’s Luis Suarez is the latest social networker to argue for reducing your dependence on email as a productivity tactic. Tired of spending hours a day on email, Suarez worked to stop the cycle of emails generating emails, reducing his incoming stream by 80% in a week. Among the tactics he recommends:
- Answer questions via blog postings or wiki pages, rather than email, so that future contacts with the same question can find the answer without asking you.
- Use instant messages for short answers; switch to phone if a conversation lasts more than three minutes.
- Use a feed reader instead of email to track relevant content; this gives you more control of what you receive and when.
- Encourage your contacts to follow your lead, so they cut down on the overall email glut too.
I like Suarez’s advice as a first set of concrete steps you can take to reduce one of the big productivity issues for many web workers. But I think there’s a broader context here as well. The reason so many people dream about reducing email is that email has been fabulously successful in recent years. And if you’re going to attack the email problem, you need to be careful that you don’t create other problems in its place. Source: Web Worker Daily » Archive Cutting Email Down to Size «
All kidding aside, Luis is right. We’ve gotten spoiled by email. Sarah Perez posted about Attent, which I agree with her doesn’t solve the key problem…we need to think.
From personal experience, I found that a lot of people chose to email simply because email was the absolute fastest way to send out a request for help, a question, or to share a message with a large number of people. When this became a burden, such as it was at one of my I.T. jobs, the real cause that should have been addressed was why were people turning to email instead of using the tools to them at hand? Why were people sending emails instead of logging help desk tickets? Why were people sending emails instead of referring to online documentation? Why were people sending emails instead of doing the job themselves – which they had the ability and permissions to do, but not the know-how?
The problem that must be addressed in every company are the underlying causes that lead some people to use email far more than necessary – and use it first, without thinking things through. This tool, Attent, aims to do that, but without deeper understanding about what’s wrong in the particular company. Source: Email Overload: Band-Aids Are Not Solutions | sarahintampa
Look for the answers. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can find stuff. I do a lot of searches through emails, files, the net. When was the last time you fired off and email before you through if you had the answer?
I had one of those today. I was about two seconds away from hitting send and thought for a second, maybe I have the answer.
Turned out I did.
I wonder with all our information, the information that we’re drowning in, if we’ve lost the ability to look, seek, and find.
While the solutions might not lie in technology, technology can certainly help get you there.
Tags: email, informationRelated Stories
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