Why is my email broken?

Almost everyone I know who uses email extensively for work is overwhelmed by email.  People used to talk about achieving 'in-box zero,' that triumphant (yet fleeting) moment when you go through your email inbox and process all email.  Processing email means: responding to it, forwarding it, filing it, or deleting it.  

In the old days, you could quickly go through your email inbox and delete a lot of stuff and be left with just a few things to respond to or otherwise deal with in some meaningful way.  Those days are long gone. I routinely hear people (smart, well-organized, tech-savvy people) say that they've given up on achieving 'in-box zero.'  Some people declare 'email bankruptcy,' which means that they delete all the emails in their inbox and then start from scratch.  And these are the optimists!

The pessimists have declared that they are giving up on email altogether, often opting to simply use Twitter and the phone.  Their strategy is this: communicate en masse to their Twitter followers, and DM ('direct message') those that they want to talk to directly.  And anyone else that they want to communicate with (i.e. those who don't use Twitter) they'll talk to by phone. This seems harsh, but it's even harsher when you consider that 'communicating by Twitter' means using 140 characters or less to send messages.

I am not yet a 'pessimist,' and I haven't yet declared email bankruptcy.  But I do think that email is 'broken.' Why?

Well, for starters, there are simply too many messages in my inbox to deal with everyday.  I could take up at least 30 minutes each day just deleting emails.  Filing them would add another hour to the day.  The real problem are the emails that I have to respond to.  I get at least 30 emails that require some serious response, and probably another 40 or so from people who EXPECT a response even though I can't help them, or can't help them at the time their response comes in. 

In short, I am constrained to simply not respond to a number of emails.  This makes me very uncomfortable, but I just don't have time to answer.  And even if I did, for many of these emails a response would simply generate another email back from the person with a follow up suggestion or question. 

So, if you email me and I don't respond it's not because I don't care.  It's because I have finite resources and my email situation is totally broken. If you're happy with your email situation then you are truly fortunate.  I envy you completely.  

For me, email is more burdensome than helpful. And I expect things to get worse.

Comments

[Laurie]

Personally, I have little difficulty keeping up with my email, but maybe I'm just not as busy!!

I do recommend though that business owners in such a situation delegate some email duties. If you find someone you can trust to work with you - it can mean you don't ignore important emails or contacts and yet you don't waste half your day on email!

[Shannon Phillips]

You broke the cardinal rule. Don't complain about something without offering a solution that you think is workable. You mention using Twitter/Phone or going into email bankruptcy, but you don't offer either of those as solutions. What's your proposed solution?

[Ernie Svenson]

I don't have a proposed solution, but as Ross Perot frequently said, "I'm all ears." Google Wave was created largely because of the premise that email is broken. I've played with it a bit and it could solve a lot of the structural problems of email (i.e. grouping related emails together, and allowing later-appearing participants to join the conversation). But the problems of email that I face are driven also by the fact that it's too easy to send someone an email without any sense of whether they're really busy.

If you call someone on the phone and get a busy signal (which is also an anachronism now) you know that they are tied up. People email others and have no idea what they're 'status' is. To "fix email" you have to analyze all of the problems and see why they're there. And my problems may be different than yours. The first step is to recognize there is a major problem. The solution (if there is one) won't be quick and it probably won't be simple. I'm not "complaining" so hopefully I won't be convicted of breaking the cardinal rule.

I'm pointing out that my email system is not working. Like I said if someone out there knows of a solution I'd love to hear it. But, I've been listening to enough other people in similar situations describe this problem and I haven't heard a good solution yet. Other than the aforementioned, Twitter scheme and 'email bankruptcy.'

[John Martin]

Hi Ernie,

I had thought a couple of years ago that one could take Thunderbird (OSS - Mac / *nix / Windows) source code and modify it to store messages in a mbox format on a per conversation basis. Effectively you would have a message ingester take each message arriving and remove all information from the body that had previously appeared in the conversation (reply with previous message / signature blocks / disclaimer footers / etc.) and then update the mbox-message file with just the new header and unique information.

The effect would be that each file conversation that appears in your mailbox would "bounce" back to the top of your email with an unread value each and every time a new reply to an existing conversation. It would show attachments in the body of the conversation mbox-file when they appeared in chronological order. It would also eliminate the concept of having a separate "Sent" / "Inbox" since your messages are merged into the conversation mbox-file along with the ones you receive. Instead you could have client/matter folders, job folders or whatever labels make since to you. This makes archiving a project or matter very simple.

I only got as far as alpha testing the technologies involved, but it reduced my mail storage from 2GB to 322MB and from 6,786 messages to less than 500 conversations.

My $0.02,

John

[Ernie Svenson]

Hey John:

That's a very thoughtful approach, which I think would be very helpful if it were built in to email programs (i.e. Outlook etc). To me, this is what Gmail's threading feature attempts to do. And to a certain extent it's successful.

But, really the problems of email are not coming from just one source. Google Wave, which is so new it makes NO sense for people to judge its utility yet, attempts to take the threading to a new level by defining separate communiques as 'waves.' So it starts with the premise that you are going to discuss a topic, and only after you're crafted the topic and the message do you decide who to send it to. Obviously, this assumes that most conversations are going to be between more than two people (or that, eventually, the conversation will open up to more than two people).

If more than two people are going to discuss something, and if later on more people are likely to be added to the discussion, then it makes sense to start with the idea that the 'topic of conversation' is primary, and the 'participants' are secondary. Traditional email assumes that the conversation is a one-off call and response between two people (with the possibility of "carbon copies" to others who need to be apprised of the conversation).

I could go on, but this is only the comment area so I'll save my thoughts for another blog post. But, the bottom line is that some of the problems with email are structural. And other problems are social (i.e. it's too easy to ping someone without having any sense of how busy they are, or, in the case of spam, without CARING how busy they are).

[Paper on Research]

Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.

[Robert Weimer]

You may find the following interesting:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/09/10-steps-to-become-an-email-ninja/

Essentially, I've heard people have 'autoresponse' email replies generated notifying the sender that you only respond to emails from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., or some other block of time.

I believe this idea sets a realistic expectation on the part of your client or co-workers.

Robert

[belenbelen]

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I only got as far as alpha testing the technologies involved, but it reduced my mail storage from 2GB to 322MB and from 6,786 messages to less than 500 conversations.