You’re watching a movie and a character’s alarm clock goes off at an ungodly hour. That sound searing into your head, you know the one. Your brain cringes and you sink back into the sofa a little. Now replace the alarm clock with your email notification chime. Same response, I bet.
In its 41-year history, email has gone full circle from heralding the dawn of a new era in communication to something we now see as an addiction that requires treatment. Going email cold turkey, achieving inbox zero – the internet is awash with advice on how to relieve email stress and stop the evil email overlords killing our productivity. The Washington Post even has a handy (read: depressing) calculator that works out how much of your life you’ve wasted on work email.
While much of it is well intentioned, I find a lot of the advice out there in cyberspace questionable. Take these 3 easy ways to respond to every email in 24 hours, one of the inspirations behind writing this blog post. While I can see the point of responding simply to buy some time, this kind of email procrastination doesn’t go any way to solving the problem. Instead, you’re simply turning your inbox into a 'to be dealt with later' pile.
What would happen if you went email cold turkey for a week? It’s been done, and the office guinea pigs in question were much happier and more productive for it. Shifting the information flow away from email towards an intranet-based discussion feed within a social collaboration tool can work wonders. Take Happeo Channels, where teams can discuss topics in their own time, prioritize tasks, share ideas, and collaborate on documents – without sending a single email. Working with collaboration tools in this way saves time, eliminates the pressure to respond immediately, and gathers conversations into one neat, manageable space as opposed to a frustrating, confusing mess of email threads.
Interested in hearing more? Take a look at how we’ve helped our customers and book a Happeo demo.
5 mins read