This WSJ article charged me with doing a quick exercise: take a look at my e-mail outbox and determine how many of those e-mails didn't need to be sent. Well, I have a large inbox and an e ven larger outbox (i.e., I don't delete messages—ever), so I never came up with a concrete number, but it didn't take long for me to get the writer's point.
"E-mail enables lazy communication. By giving us a way to exchange messages that aren't important enough to require a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, it breeds unimportant communications," which is "horrible for our professional lives, allowing and even encouraging our inner bureaucrat to come out and play," the article says.
Inner bureaucrat? I didn't know I had one, but that doesn't sound good at all—especially in a small business. The article goes on to offer a few tips. They may seem a little strange ("You get to send an internal e-mail to four people. That's it. Any more than that, each recipient costs you a quarter."), but they make a lot of sense—and can help you start taming your e-mail inbox today.
Posted by Lena Basha on April 9, 2007 02:37 PM
