E-mail fatigue

[ghost of miles]

I'll preface this by saying that obviously e-mail is a wonderful thing--it's enabled me to enjoy contact with a lot of people, both former friends and online acquaintances, that I otherwise would not have sustained or initiated. It's an amazing professional tool as well. But some days now I open up the several accounts I have--personal and professional--and feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the listserv messages, communiques, and other items that add up to a virtual bombardment of online correspondence, news, and solicitation. Obviously I can cut back by dropping off some of the listservs, but some are very helpful and interesting, even if the ratio of useful-to-not-so-useful messages is not so great. Just wondering if anybody else here ever experiences e-mail fatigue. I also don't really write letters anymore (something that I did quite a lot of in my teens and twenties) and wonder if that's going to become something of a lost art (or already has).

[GregK]

I'd rather email than send text messages.

[Joe G]

Not so much email fatigue as general computer fatigue - in spite of myself (here I am, after all)!

[Free For All]

I miss the days when you could "hide" from contact. Just a phone machine, and if you weren't at home, too bad.

Now we're reachable anytime and anywhere. Email, texting, voicemail at home & at work. No more hiding.

I have a love/hate relationship with my cell phone and email accounts.

[porcy62]

I'll preface this by saying that obviously e-mail is a wonderful thing--it's enabled me to enjoy contact with a lot of people, both former friends and online acquaintances, that I otherwise would not have sustained or initiated. It's an amazing professional tool as well. But some days now I open up the several accounts I have--personal and professional--and feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the listserv messages, communiques, and other items that add up to a virtual bombardment of online correspondence, news, and solicitation. Obviously I can cut back by dropping off some of the listservs, but some are very helpful and interesting, even if the ratio of useful-to-not-so-useful messages is not so great. Just wondering if anybody else here ever experiences e-mail fatigue. I also don't really write letters anymore (something that I did quite a lot of in my teens and twenties) and wonder if that's going to become something of a lost art (or already has).

I feel your pain.

Expecially about letters.

The fact is that e-mail is some sort of BIG BLOB where everything is 'Dazed And Confused': everything in the same place at the same time: job, friends, advertising, communiques.

Once upon a time you went to your mail box, opened it, throw away all the BS, piled all the bills and the job's annoyance in a dusty and hidden place, and grab THE letters you really cared.

Writing a letter to a friend/fiance/relative/ was an emotional journey that took time and love, I still remember the hundreds of letter I wrote, actually I still have them, as well as the answers. It was an active emotional behavior, that gained me some of the best friends I still have today.

Now it's so damn easy that I have the feeling that, despite the global communication, I have to look at them right between the eyes.

Though I am not totally negative about e-mail.

One problem is the speed, I mean I wrote an e-mail to friend, or I received one. Damn, I feel obliged to respond, or I want a quick response. With e-communication we lost the time, because when I send a physical letter, it tooks days, maybe weeks, and I don't pretend a response the morning after like e-mail.

Anyway writing letters isn't a lost art. Like every art it needs devotion, patience and weariness.

[catesta]

I miss the days when you could "hide" from contact. Just a phone machine, and if you weren't at home, too bad.

Now we're reachable anytime and anywhere. Email, texting, voicemail at home & at work. No more hiding.

I have a love/hate relationship with my cell phone and email accounts.

I could not agree more.

As a result we've got kind of a new strange society that is afraid to walk, drive, or be seen alone without talking on the cell phone, texting, or being on the computer.

Sometimes I think we are also creating an inability for some to have direct face to face contact and real conversations.

There is almost nothing I hate more than talking on the cell phone even know I have two and receive a shit load of calls daily from both sides of the country. I don't answer quite a bit now because a lot of the calls are meaningless. "Hey dude I just saw a dog taking a shit on the side of the road!" blah blah blah

I very rarely text, if ever, and email, unfortunately I'm stuck with as it has become to much of a major communication tool in business these days.

Oh and by the way David, I just sent you an email and PM talking about this very topic.

[Quincy]

I feel your pain.

Expecially about letters.

I have a friend from college who I communicate with only through letters. He's 2000 miles away so if I were to be passing through the Chicago area I'd call, but otherwise we don't use the phone and we've never emailed. I'm not even sure he has an address as it doesn't come up. Unfortunately I've been lax in replying - we used to get 3-4 letters out to each other each year and now it takes effort to get out one, as it's such a different mindset.

The fact is that e-mail is some sort of BIG BLOB where everything is 'Dazed And Confused': everything in the same place at the same time: job, friends, advertising, communiques.

Once upon a time you went to your mail box, opened it, throw away all the BS, piled all the bills and the job's annoyance in a dusty and hidden place, and grab THE letters you really cared.

It's not quite the same thing, but look into your email program's filters and consider using different folders for certain friends as opposed to work or family members (gee, I didn't intend to lump family with unpleasant work relations.) I assign different incoming mail noises for listserve email as opposed to other. It's one way of trying to segregate the BS from the messages from friends.

[Neal Pomea]

At work we've started using instant messaging as a way of getting quicker responses than with e-mail. I just look at it as cutting in line ahead of e-mails that were sent earlier, expecting more immediate treatment! Can't do anything about it though because my boss is a big fan of instant messaging.

[Tim McG]

E-mail has become a necessary evil in my biz as well in my personal communcations with folks.

To cut down on the fatigue factor, I just don't open any mail where I don't recognize the sender and spam the rest of the ListBot stuff.

Seems to work for me.

Edited June 1, 2008 by GoodSpeak

[Free For All]

Instant messaging- that's another thing that can be extremely annoying. While I do enjoy it on occasion, I have a few friends who are excessively chatty and I find myself ducking out of my AOL account quickly after checking email (and I see who is online) to avoid getting cornered and drawn into a long "conversation".

[Shrdlu]

Agree with a lot of this.

But I do like my txts, lol.

One sad thing is that, many times, cyber sex has replaced the real thing. Seems like some people would rather cyber than meet.

Time to go back to the mid 1800s, right?

[7/4]

Agree with a lot of this.

But I do like my txts, lol.

One sad thing is that, many times, cyber sex has replaced the real thing. Seems like some people would rather cyber than meet.

Time to go back to the mid 1800s, right?

Thanks for sharing.

[Parkertown]

Email fatigue?

I'm not sure...but I think I might have it...

"150 unread messages in Inbox...:

It's all the dang jokes...people just forward 'em all the time. I just don't have that much time...and they're not all funny either...

[7/4]

June 14, 2008

Creators of E-Mail Monster Now Try to Tame It

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO — The onslaught of cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying to mop it up.

Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge.

Their effort comes as statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused.

The big chip maker Intel found in an eight-month internal study that some employees who were encouraged to limit digital interruptions said they were more productive and creative as a result.

Intel and other companies are already experimenting with solutions. Small units at some companies are encouraging workers to check e-mail messages less frequently, to send group messages more judiciously and to avoid letting the drumbeat of digital missives constantly shake up and reorder to-do lists.

A Google software engineer last week introduced E-Mail Addict, an experimental feature for the company’s e-mail service that lets people cut themselves off from their in-boxes for 15 minutes.

Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at the research firm Basex and a member of the new group’s board, said the companies realized they faced a monster of their own creation. He pointed to a Silicon Valley maxim that companies should “eat their own dog food,” meaning they should make use of their own innovations.

“They’re realizing they’re eating too much,” Mr. Spira said.

Many people readily recognize that they face — or invite — continual interruption, but the emerging data on the scale of the problem may come as a surprise.

A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.

The fractured attention comes at a cost. In the United States, more than $650 billion a year in productivity is lost because of unnecessary interruptions, predominately mundane matters, according to Basex. The firm says that a big chunk of that cost comes from the time it takes people to recover from an interruption and get back to work.

Companies are also realizing that there is money to be made in helping people reduce their digital gluttony. Major corporations around the world are searching for ways to keep software tools from becoming distractions, said John Tang, a researcher at I.B.M., who is a member of the new group.

“There’s a competitive advantage of figuring out how to address this problem,” Mr. Tang said. He said that there was “a certain amount of irony” in the fact that the solutions are coming from the very companies that built the digital systems in the first place.

The introspection in Silicon Valley comes with defensiveness, judging from conversations with those involved. Digital communications are sacrosanct, the tools of the revolution, so the criticisms of them are merely a path to thinking about how they can be done better. And, of course, the solution to the technology problem is simply more and better technology.

Outside the working group, the participating companies, like I.B.M., are already devising ways to contain the digital flow.

The E-Mail Addict feature in Gmail is more of a blunt instrument. Clicking the “Take a break” link turns the screen gray, and a message reads: “Take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack. We’ll be back in 15 minutes!”

Michael Davidson, the engineer who created the feature, said the idea for it came after he was talking to friends about the constant temptation to check e-mail messages.

“I coded up this feature that lets you say, ‘I don’t have self-control, so I’d like to shut down my mail for a little while,’ ” he said. (Those who find they are truly addicted can cheat by hitting the escape key.)

There is a vernacular forming around information overload. Silicon Valley denizens speak of “e-mail bankruptcy,” or getting so far behind in responding to e-mail messages that it becomes necessary to delete them all and start over. Another relatively new term is “e-mail apnea,” coined by the writer Linda Stone, which refers to the way that people, when struck by the volume of new messages in their in-boxes, unconsciously hold their breath.

But the problem, researchers say, is not just volume but also etiquette. Bad actors hit “reply all” on a message instead of responding to an individual, or forward jokes to big groups. Some say the problem has a psychological dimension in that e-mail messages provide an insidious feedback loop.

“We are hunter-gatherers at the core,” said Tony Wright, chief executive of RescueTime, who is also a member of the new nonprofit group. “We open e-mail and hit ‘send and receive’ to see if something interesting has come in.”

Members of the new organization, called the Information Overload Research Group, planned to have their first meeting in July in New York.

The group plans to seek solutions, both cultural and technological.

For its part, Intel started two experiments last September with 300 engineers and other employees at a chip design group based in Austin, Tex., and with some team members in Chandler, Ariz. In the first experiment, employees had four hours on Tuesday mornings when they were encouraged to limit both digital and in-person contact.

Laminated cards were made up announcing “quiet time” and attached to cubicles. But within a few weeks the workers found the system too restrictive, and the cards seemed like something from grade school.

The cards came down, and some employees started to use e-mail messages, though judiciously and with more awareness of their habits, while others continued the stricter regimen, said Brad Beavers, the Austin site manager.

In a survey, nearly three-quarters of participants said the quiet time routine should be extended to the rest of the company.

“It’s huge. We were expecting less,” said Nathan Zeldes, an Intel engineer who led the experiments and who for a decade has been studying the impact of technology on productivity. “When people are uninterrupted, they can sit back and design chips and really think.”

In the other experiment, called “zero e-mail Fridays,” the goal was to encourage employees to favor face-to-face communication. Mr. Beavers said employees liked the idea in theory, but they continued to send e-mail messages, finding them essential.

Just 30 percent of employees endorsed the program, but 60 percent recommended it for wider use at Intel, with modifications.

“We’re trying to address the problem that people get so addicted to e-mail that they will send an e-mail across an aisle, across a partition, and that’s not a good thing,” he said.