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Some have said that email is dead. My take is completely opposite: email is one of the most effective communication methods we have.
There are so many ways to communicate these days it just boggles the mind.
What was once limited to postal mail and (land line) telephone calls has blossomed to include instant messages and chat, store-and-forward audio and video messages (you record and send; the recipient listens or views at their convenience), text messages, video call services like Skype and others, as well as group conversations using tools like Google Hangouts. Not to mention mobile apps that mimic walkie-talkies in addition to good old mobile phone calls and text messaging, and much more.
I do some or all of thoseĀ from time to time as situations warrant.
But IĀ keep coming back to a tried and true communication mechanismĀ that works the best for me for so many different reasons.
This by far the most important reason I gravitate to email as my communications mechanism of choice.
I feel like Iām horrible off-the-cuff.1 I feel awkward and put āon the spotā, and Iām usually left with that āI should have saidā feeling.
I just donāt think that fast.
Composing an email lets me take whatever time I need ā be it a few seconds, a few minutes or (rarely) a fewĀ hours.
2. Email lets me say exactly what I want
Just asĀ important, email allows me to carefully craft what I say and make sure that Iām saying what I intend to say.
Thatās not to say Iām still not occasionally misunderstood ā no communications mechanism is perfect ā but if I can invest the time to think about what Iām saying and how I say it, chances are Iāll do a much better job of getting my point across.
Yes, I suppose it helps that Iām a writer. But letās clarify: it wasnāt always so. Iām first and foremost a computer geek, and have been since Fortran was a required course back in my college days.
I was certainly no writer then; not a writer of words, anyway ā I was and remain a writer of code. And yet email was it for me from the moment I was introduced to it.2
3. Email lets me consume on my schedule
Email is never an interruption. If it is, youāre doing it wrong and Iāll talk about that in a minute.
I can turn off email for hours ā and I often do. And thatās OK!
I can choose when Iām going to consume email, or not. I might elect not to open my email program until noon some days, or I may elect to clear out my inbox first thing and then ignore it while I get other things done.
I control it, not the other way around.
4. Email lets me reply without interrupting
Similarly, I can reply to anyone at any time and know that it never needs to be an interruption for them. I neverĀ have to feel guilty about sending an email.
ThatĀ means Iām more likely to respond, rather than avoiding the awkwardness or annoyance of some other form of contact.
And of course, my reply will be more thoughtful.
5. I can scan email quickly
No one said you have to read the whole message.
Particularly on active discussion lists, itās often enough to check out a subject line, or quickly scan just a bit of the message and realize that itās not something you need to read or participate in.
Deleting is also my friend. I can, and often do, quickly scan the accumulated email in the morning and delete or archive anything and everything that I donāt care to act on at that moment.
And I can do all that quickly and easily.
6. I can read it anywhere
Naturally, I deal withĀ email on my computers ā both of them.
But I can also deal with it on my mobile phone, or my tablet ā¦ heck, even my Kindle will open up Gmailās web interface and allow me to read and reply to email.
No, sometimes those devices arenāt the best for composing lengthy replies ā but as I said earlier, I can choose when I want to do what. What they are great for, however, is scanning, reading, deleting and archiving email that comes in.
No matter where I am.
Waiting in various locations like restaurants, traffic jams, before and after meetings (and yes, sometimes during)ā¦ while having a coffee at Starbucks ā¦ it doesnāt matter where I am: email is ubiquitous.
7. I can preserve context
One of the problems with delayed responses is that the sender often loses context. If I reply āYesā, for example, they may have forgotten the question that they asked just the day before.
Thatās easily dealt with. My replies often look like this:
> On Tuesday 10/27 Joe Blow said:
> Are we still meeting on Friday?
Yes!
I didnāt quote the entire email, just enough to give context. Itās a wonderful way to make sure everything is clear and that everyone is on the same page.
8. I can keep a record
I keep almost all of my mail ā both what I send and what I receive. Storage is cheap, after all.
Why?
Thereās no predicting what Iāll need a year or two from now ā and yes, I have occasionally gone back several years to find something for an assortment of reasons. Knowing that I have all this email archived (and backed up) makes finding old and random items very easy.
Now, to present the other side for a moment: this is why lawyers prefer phone calls and in-person meetings. Email records can be subpoenaed by the courts in many jurisdictions. That message you sent last year could be an important part of a court case. As long as itās something thatĀ helps your cause, thatās fine, but if Ā not ā¦ well, you may want to reconsider how much email you keep and for how long. (And as always, Iām not an attorney ā if you have an actual question relating to the legal issues surrounding email retention I strongly suggest you contact yours.)
If you hate email, youāre doing it wrong
One of the common reactions from some people is āI HATE EMAILā ā usually from people with an overflowing inbox.3
My friends, if thatās your reaction then youāre doing email wrong. Thereās simply no reason email canāt be managed into a useful tool instead of an oppressive burden.
UnsubscribeĀ ā stop receiving all those newsletters and promotional emails that youāre not paying attention to anyway. (Yes, even my own ā if youāre not finding it helpful, then why should I be bugging you?)
Use that spam filterĀ ā make sure that all that stuff you shouldnāt unsubscribe from ā the stuff you didnāt originally ask for ā gets swept out of your inbox automatically so that you never have to look at it.
Donāt save email in your inbox ā set up folders to throw messages in once you decide what they need. Youāre probably not going to act on āem while theyāre in your inbox anyway, so why have them in your face?
Act on each message once ā this is an ideal that Iāll admit I donāt always reach, but the goal is simple: touch each incoming message only once if at all possible. Archive it, delete it, reply to it, orĀ whatever makes sense for the type of message it is.
Rules are your friend ā use rules and filters to sort your incoming email for you automatically. My servers send me a bunch of email every night ā that I never look at since I have inbox rules set up to automatically move them to a folder. IfĀ IĀ encounter an issue I can always refer to them in that folder. Use the computer for what itās good at: automated tasks.
Use multiple accounts ā often the ātoo muchā email we get is the result of signing up for things, making purchases that require an email address and so on. Use a throw away account ā pay attention only as long as you need to to complete the transaction and then ignore it all. If a subscription or an account becomes important you can always change the email address used to be that of your primary email account.
Turn off new message alerts ā email should never interrupt you. Check email when you feel like it, and even then donāt check it very often. Thereās simply no reason to. Polling for email, or even worse, having a new message alert pop up while youāre doing something else not only interrupts whatever it is youāre doing, but it adds to that sense of being overwhelmed.
Donāt think of email as something you ādoā. Email isnāt a job, itās not a role, itās not an end in and of itself.
Email is simply a tool. A tool to get other things done.
Evaluate it like any other tool you use, and learn to use it appropriately.
But ā¦ the kids arenāt doing it!
Itās a common comment that individuals under a certain age (which ranges from 10 to 40 depending on who youāre talking to) donāt use email.
My assertion is that most any that enter the professional work force will, almost from day one. Any that want to communicate reliably with those on the other side of that imaginary dividing line will as well.
No, the kids arenāt jumping on it as quickly, but I suspect most will eventually as situations arise for which it remains the best solution.
And to be completely realistic, emailās not for everyone. For folks with lifestyle issues or any issue that makes reading and/or writing itself a burden, email may not always be the best choice.
Email has its issues and it has its problems, thereās no escaping that.
1: Though there exists evidence to the contrary. The Ask Leo! Answercasts were off-the-cuff and unscripted: I read a question and free-formed the answer. So I suspect the comfort with the material at hand has something to do with it. And a little time to pick which questions to answer and think about āem beforehand doesnāt hurt.
2: May of 1983. I was introduced to email my first day at Microsoft. Iād gotten through school and my first job without an address of my own. My first was Ā @microsoft.com.
3: I have two email accounts that each get hundreds of emails a day. My inboxes are empty. Honest. I just checked.
3 comments on ā8 Reasons Email is Wonderfulā
I agree that other forms of communication can be an interruption. If Iām busy working on a project at work with a deadline, sometimes, I just want/need to get it done. If someone phones, I have to take time away form the project to answer their question, which might be 2 minutes or might be 30 minutes, depending on their problem. With email, I can glance and see whether their question truly is more important than me getting my project done. If itās MUST ANSWER NOW, Iāll take the time to do so. If it looks like it can wait, I can ignore the email until I complete my project and then go back and respond with a polite, āIām sorry I couldnāt get back to you sooner.ā
The most useful rule/filter I implemented in my personal email is the one that says, āIf sender is not in address book then mark as spam.ā My inbox only gets a few emails a day. The rest are in spam. Periodically, Iāll scan the spam folder to see if something was marked in error, but usually it isnāt. For new correspondents, I use the Thunderbird option of adding new recipients to the Collected Addresses address book. That way when they respond, their email will go to my Inbox, even though they are not technically part of my personal address book.
Iām a huge email fan too, and as a freelancer, I use it as my primary means of corresponding with clients. One of my absolute favorite features of email is the ability to delay sending or send at a future time. I can type a response at any hour, but set the mail program (Outlook, in my case) to hold it in the outbox to send at a specific time (during business hours). This way, my clients donāt see that I respond to mail after hours and assume Iām available/expect me to do so around the clock. It helps to set/maintain some boundaries, which is very important when the office is just steps away. The delay send requires keeping the mail program running at all times, or at least during the window when the mail is to be sent, but I keep it running 24/7 anyway.
I wholeheartedly accept all your 8 points.
You can add another reason. I appreciate Email for its help to save, edit, delay, and reconsider my āRantā. Though delaying the angry response is rather difficult for me (thankfully it is getting easier), my experience shows that it saves me from mistaken beliefs, misunderstanding, misreading, and as Leo said, āI could have said it differentlyā. More than once Iāve deleted my āsavedā mails after my discreet enquiry revealed the āactual situationā. Looking back, I did not save it, but actually it saved me!
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I agree that other forms of communication can be an interruption. If Iām busy working on a project at work with a deadline, sometimes, I just want/need to get it done. If someone phones, I have to take time away form the project to answer their question, which might be 2 minutes or might be 30 minutes, depending on their problem. With email, I can glance and see whether their question truly is more important than me getting my project done. If itās MUST ANSWER NOW, Iāll take the time to do so. If it looks like it can wait, I can ignore the email until I complete my project and then go back and respond with a polite, āIām sorry I couldnāt get back to you sooner.ā
The most useful rule/filter I implemented in my personal email is the one that says, āIf sender is not in address book then mark as spam.ā My inbox only gets a few emails a day. The rest are in spam. Periodically, Iāll scan the spam folder to see if something was marked in error, but usually it isnāt. For new correspondents, I use the Thunderbird option of adding new recipients to the Collected Addresses address book. That way when they respond, their email will go to my Inbox, even though they are not technically part of my personal address book.
Iām a huge email fan too, and as a freelancer, I use it as my primary means of corresponding with clients. One of my absolute favorite features of email is the ability to delay sending or send at a future time. I can type a response at any hour, but set the mail program (Outlook, in my case) to hold it in the outbox to send at a specific time (during business hours). This way, my clients donāt see that I respond to mail after hours and assume Iām available/expect me to do so around the clock. It helps to set/maintain some boundaries, which is very important when the office is just steps away. The delay send requires keeping the mail program running at all times, or at least during the window when the mail is to be sent, but I keep it running 24/7 anyway.
I wholeheartedly accept all your 8 points.
You can add another reason. I appreciate Email for its help to save, edit, delay, and reconsider my āRantā. Though delaying the angry response is rather difficult for me (thankfully it is getting easier), my experience shows that it saves me from mistaken beliefs, misunderstanding, misreading, and as Leo said, āI could have said it differentlyā. More than once Iāve deleted my āsavedā mails after my discreet enquiry revealed the āactual situationā. Looking back, I did not save it, but actually it saved me!