email jail

I have read, with interest, about quite a few companies that have now banned email.  While I don't think this is something that would work well for all companies, for some, it just may.

Many people have adopted email as their de facto standard of business communication, and it does have a lot of features that would allow you to believe it is good for that purpose.

It does the following quite well these days:

• Allows you and others to see, use, and share a common calendar
• Allows you to sort messages into categories, even automatically
• Allows anyone anywhere to send a message that will wait reliably until you view it, eons even.
• Allows communication to multiple people at one to time
• Can cover vast distances in seconds
• Can be archived and retrieved for as long as it makes sense to store

Unfortunately, every item up there seems to have a corollary.

• People assume that if your calendar is open that you must not be busy with anything.  Worst case, managing the calendar and attending meetings because you had an open time slot takes the place of working on many of the things you had meetings to talk about accomplishing in the first place.
• Allows you to sort things directly to trash.  Okay, maybe that belongs in the top list...
• If you did not, for whatever reason, read the email message in the first few days of its life, its value seems to diminish rapidly.  Storing messages for a long time really only has value to the legal department.
• Allows everyone to realize you cannot compose a good sentence all at the same time.  Right along with this, allows everyone to realize you always click reply all, and allows everyone to receive the same junk mail you only meant to send to one person.
• Can cover vast distances in seconds.  Need I say more on this?
• Storing messages for a long time really only has value to the legal department and government agencies that do not exist.

It is just a gripe if you don't also propose a solution.  Instead of banning email, try to use it better for what it can provide you, and do not let it and the infernal calendar consume your day.

• If the only way to accomplish things other than meetings is to block time in your week, then block time in your week.  People expect you to take action from email, but they also want you to take action from the times they actually get to talk to you.  Alternately, consider denying some invites, or ask for them for a different timeslot if the topic is important.  Remember that one of your workmates thinks it was important enough to invite you to.  Use the automatic reply to your advantage.  "I am away from email today, and will get to your message in due course."  Set it to only send to a person one time of course.  Only say you will get to it if you plan to get to it.
• If you find yourself sorting things directly into trash, take the proactive measure to trace down the source and solve the problem that is generating the email.  If it is an automatic process, fix it.  If it is not important enough to fix, then why is it emailing you, or anyone else for that matter?
• Old mail is probably the hardest thing to manage.  I think an entire book could be written on this, but then you may email the book to your friends, and it might sit in their boxes for too long.
• This one is simple.  If you cannot compose a sentence, get help.  If you are scared to ask for help, you have already lost.  Nothing will let your workmates know that you are too rushed to pay attention to what is going on around you than a reply all to the email from HR asking people to not use the reply all function unless it is absolutely necessary.  Don't use run-on sentences either.

Anyone out there wish their company was one of those that decided to ban email?