Back around 1985, Bob Green and I invented host-based email. We were probably two of a few hundred people who came up with the idea of electronic email. At that time, many businesses had computers that employees were logging into every day and those computers were becoming powerful enough to host email applications.
Bob’s and I my original vision was simple. We were building Robelle into a successful software company. Bob and I needed lengthy periods to design and program our solutions. The telephone interrupted us, disrupting the intense focus we needed to build world-class products. We liked regular mail (snail mail is what we call it today), because we got to choose when we got the mail from the mailbox. The only problem was that it was too slow for our communication needs and thus was born the idea for an electronic version of our real mailbox. Bob and I could send messages and the receiver could choose when to read the messages.
Fast forward thirty years. Walking down the street yesterday, I feel like Bob’s and my original vision of email as a communication medium where the receiver could choose when to get messages has been lost on a generation of smart phone users. People walk down the street, completely ignoring what is going on around them, answering email like Bob and I used to answer the telephone. Over time an expectation of instant response to email has crept into society.
There is a price we pay for how we treat email. Take this recent Daily Mail article The seven deadly email sins that leave us all fuming: Scientists identify bad inbox habits that can create tensions in the office. The article points out bad email habits from ping-pong (two people instantly responding to each other’s email) to the effects of ignoring email messages.
In his book Expel the Elephants Kevin Lawrence provides concrete steps you can take to use email to boost performance, not hinder it. Kevin reminds us of this truth about email:
“I have yet to see a job description that says ‘must have high competency in responding to email.’ People are not hired to respond to email, yet their lives become burdened by their inbox.”
How can you manage your email inbox today?
