Does Email Sometimes Seem Like Your Enemy? Consider the "Email Charter"
By: Steve Grumm
I came across a good Washington Post piece about how email can exert unwarranted control over our workday (and our mindset) by distracting us and sidetracking our planned work tasks. The author, Chris Anderson, writes about beginning his day by reading three emails, the subjects of which, while hardly spam, were also hardly on his radar screen when he logged in:
These e-mails have nothing in common — except for the fact that none of their issues had been on my agenda that morning. I don’t even know one of the senders. But although it took only a few minutes to read these notes, I suddenly feel pressure to develop coherent thoughts on complex questions regarding someone else’s business enterprise, office politics and world peace.
It’s barely 8 a.m., and I’m already drowning in e-mail. In the blink of an eye, my day’s priorities have been commandeered. And more missives keep pouring in, including tweets, Google Plus notifications, Facebook status updates and instant messages. It’s essentially a fire hose of information all day long….
This rings true to me. And I have just enough of a pleaser living inside me that I can too easily drop a time-sensitive, involved project to think ten minutes about a completely random email inquiry from someone I haven’t spoken with in months.
Anderson’s solution: we should consider the principles of the Email Charter – 10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral. Give it a read…
