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A geek who can't use email
Mar 26, 2008
If you keep up with the techie world, you'll know the name Michael Arrington. He runs TechCrunch, one of the most popular techie blogs, and so has a good bit of exposure, and influence, in that world. He's made millions of dollars from past entrepreneurial ventures and might serve, for some, as a model of Silicon Valley success.
He also has no idea how to manage his email.
Earlier this week Arrington wrote this in a column:
I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox. But even so, I currently have 2,433 unread emails in my inbox. Plus another 721 in my Facebook inbox. and about thirty skype message windows open with unanswered messages. It goes without saying, of course, that my cell phone voicemail box is also full (I like the fact that new messages can't be left there, so I have little incentive to clear it out).
Declaring "email bankruptcy," if you haven't heard of it, is the act of deleting everything in the inbox so as to get the message count to zero. Voila, no more email overload! What an easy solution. As for everyone who wrote you, hoping for a reply, or perhaps sending you an urgent message, well... if it's important, they'll write back. (Right?)
One benefit of declaring email bankruptcy, I think, is the "proof" that you're plugged in and important. Surely if you have so much email that you can't manage it, lots of people are asking for your time and attention! Work must be a constant adrenaline rush! Wow!
But consider the outcome of this strategy. Arrington effectively has no email, since he's liable to delete anything he receives without reading it first; and he has no voice mail, since he leaves his voice mail box in the full state. Here is a leader of Silicon Valley who is no longer able to use technology. Strange.
I don't mean to pick on Michael Arrington. I've heard friends, colleagues, and luminaries in the industry all say the same thing: I get so much email, I'll just delete it all. They always say it with a sheepish smile, or a blanket apology ("I'm really sorry if I don't get back to you, I really want to, I just can't..."), because they know it's not a sustainable solution. Yet they keep returning to it.
To Arrington's credit, he wrote his column to admit his problem - something most people don't do, in my experience. But the solution he asks for, unfortunately, misses the mark entirely. It's straight out of the Silicon Valley playbook:
The long term answer to all of this isn't that people need to try harder to respond to communication requests. The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages.
In other words, if we have a problem of too much technology, then the answer is - you guessed it - MORE technology. Perhaps an email program that allows us to assign tags, integrate with our social network, and display everything in an innovative Web 2.0 interface. (So what if it's one more overdesigned tool we'll ignore; at least it includes all of today's buzzwords!)
I agree that some new technology is needed, but it's probably not a snazzy thing that Silicon Valley geeks would drool over. Whatever it is, Arrington really wants it:
If I knew what that solution was, I'd quit this blog and go do it. Someone out there, though, has the beginning of an idea on how we can better manage our electronic communications. And he or she may someday turn that into a product and save us.
The thing is, the solution is here. And it's easy. And the tool does exist. All it would take is a slight change in his email behavior (yes, users do actually need to change how they work in a dramatically new technology environment), and a new todo list. If Michael Arrington used the inbox method from Bit Literacy in concert with a Gootodo account, he'd solve his problem - permanently - within minutes.
But I don't expect him, or many other Silicon Valley luminaries, to come running. Bit literacy is, after all, a user-centered method - not a high-flying Web app with lots of press - and Gootodo.com is devoid of hype, buzzwords, and unnecessary features. The whole package is shockingly simple. For the Michael Arringtons out there, I'm not sure that's appealing... even if it would solve their problem.
Mark,
I started reading your book but put it down sometime ago without finishing. (Maybe that's where I went wrong.) The technique that you propose to me seems to be something that was developed for someone managing a relatively med-large amount of email from a single personal or small business account.
How much of your research was spent with users in corporate environments where the demands for responses and 'Action' on emails ebbs and flows at the rate of hundreds an hour. Creating any type of To Do lists just doesn't seem that practical. I'll have to pick up the book again and see if I have any different thoughts. I am still holding out for a silver bullet. :)
To be fair part of the solution will require a culture shift in how email is used in corporate America. Right now my experience has been an email policy is really just a list of do's and don'ts and suggestions. More of a guideline than something enforceable. Not sure if an enforceable policy is the answer either.
Funny how it all comes back to how we communicate with each other and decide when we should talk, write or raise the window and scream: "I'm madder than . . ."
-- Down to a mere 891 unread messages in an inbox of 1620 and counting.
So ironic, and so very true.
High-flying web apps = millions of $ because people think they're so great.
User focus = struggle to get funding because it's not exciting.
But people may never learn so unless you're lucky enough to work on a team where user experience is a priority, the struggle for due recognition and support will always be tough.
You're right that handling email is more about technique than tools. But there's room for tools like http://gootodo.com and http://awayfind.com (my solution) to help solve that stuff. No, we don't need a million dollar VC backed fancy app, but I find that personally investing in a tool is sometimes like joining a gym--it's a little more motivation to work out (or process that email).
While I can't imagine getting such a huge volume of daily email (100? 200? 500?), I totally agree that the principles are the same.
At that level, the game would be about how many emails you can delete or defer as fast as possible, and using stock bit levers as often as possible.
The bigger point is that if you have too much work, priority becomes that much more important. And working out of your email inbox will never tell you your priorities.
Handling email just requires a minimum of attention, and making use of spam filters, indeed managing newsletter subscriptions, filtering mailing list discussions (moving these mails to different folders for separate consumption), using drafts, etc. can all mean measures to really manage mail.
It might be useful to write (yet another?) how-to on that, but probably, some people won't learn how to handle mail as they don't even learn or know how to write mail in the first place (referring to the top-posting problem).
What you are suggesting, Mark, is basically exactly the same - you just want everybody to use your technology and use your (paid) website instead of someone else's.
While I can fully understand your desire to make money and I know you have to try hard since even you admit you failed to deliver a "high-flying Web app", I feel compelled to point out that your method wouldn't work in this particular case. Suppose Michael has 2433 unread emails a day. Suppose he can spend only 10 seconds to read the message header, decide on what action is required from his side, and calculate to which day he should forward it. I know even this is unrealistic, but bear with me for a while. 10 seconds an email gives us 6 emails per minute, that is, 2433 emails will be over in 406 minutes. That is almost seven hours, Mark, almost a whole working day spent just on stupid forwarding. I don't know how devoted Michael Arrington is, but I'm sure he'll try to kill himself after a week spent this way, at most.
Advanced rich applications with tiny usability-pumping features like automated labelling, subj-based grouping, etc, functionalities like the ones GMail provides, and general personal resource management skills tend to do it much better than any other complicated solution that its inventors try to sell as a silver bullet. Just joining the gym doesn't cut it, the actual workout still has to be done anyway.
When people tell me things like this, that they just delete email messages unread, that they don't listen to or deal with phone messages, I always wonder "Well how do your friends and family get ahold of you?"
Unless they're being total hermits, they must have SOME filtering in place so that they can get the messages they need while they pitch the ones they feel they don't want. I'm just curious why this technique can't be expanded into a more multi-tiered approach. It seems so much more like a failure if imagination -- and as you said, an option only available to the super-important -- than a failure of any of the technology.