More on too much

Learning how to deal with over abundant communication is not easy. Research in 2004 by the University of Surrey found that more than half of those surveyed thought it was bad form to use IT equipment of any kind while in a meeting or talking to someone at work. Over 80% thought it was rude to send or look at text messages while with others . If this is the case then what we think is good behaviour (in theory), is not what we do (in practice). Looking back over the last ten years I can trace my own responses, good and bad. During the 1990’s, as volumes of e-mail grew, so I found myself changing my behaviour. At first it was a novelty, to be glanced at now and then in the off chance that someone had sent me a mail. As the odds increased that new messages would be waiting in my in-box, so I began to check its contents more frequently. At the time it never occurred to me to analyse why I did this: if someone had asked me I would probably have replied that it was in case something urgent was there. I now realise that there is ALMOST NEVER anything truly urgent in an e-mail inbox. A wise acquaintance once taught me that a useful question to ask when life throws stressful situations at you, is ‘what is the worst thing that could happen in this situation?’ Usually the answer turns out to be nothing so very bad after all. The same is true of e-mail: not reading it rarely turns out to be a genuine problem.

At the time I did not see this. By 2000 I was receiving about 200 e-mails a day. On return from a fortnight’s holiday it could take up to two days to clear the back-log. By then I was also using a mobile as my chief telephone (I was travelling a lot). Most days it would ring several times per hour. Because Razorfish was global, and so was my job, the hours that it rang extended well into the evening (I’ve found that Americans in particular have an under-developed sense of international time zones). One day I found myself discussing this with a colleague and realised to my horror that some part of me was proud of the volume of correspondence I was receiving. Digging deeper, I uncovered the discomforting idea that I thought it told me (in a very rudimentary way) that I was important. When I heard other people make similar boasts I began to question whether this was a valid measurement of self-worth. In fact it made me feel more than a bit foolish.

I began to observe other issues. Messages unopened bothered me. They seemed to represent incomplete tasks. Tackling them (opening, replying, storing, deleting) gave me a sense of achievement, made me feel like I was doing my job. In a sense I was – by this stage a large part of the job did involve reading and responding to mails, picking up the phone and taking calls. But there are associated risks. Not only does dealing with mail confer an imagined sense of achievement because one can see it has gone from the screen, it is often much easier than the effort of conversing with someone. I began to think that at times maybe I was prioritising digital communication over face to face. Moreover reading and responding to mail was the first thing I liked to do in the morning. Yet I also knew that to be effective it is better to start the day with the job you least want to do – which in my work might have been a difficult conversation or composing a complex document. In comparison to these, mail was easy and I could say to myself ‘well done – you’ve cleared your inbox – now you can get on with rest of the day’.

Comments

[Chris]

For most people it's more like 'well done – you’ve cleared your inbox – hope you sleep well!'

Excellent stuff. It seems most under 20s agree - email is a dead medium, used only to talk to older relatives.

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