via Engadget:
Here’s what makes email the most reviled technology ever, Stewart Butterfield says: “There’s a billion fucking things you have to do in your life, and email is the distillation of the other stuff that other people want you to do.” So maybe the solution to email is just what Paul Ford said: taking, if not full control of our lives, then at least fuller responsibility for them. Not passing the buck (which, not coincidentally, is something that email is great at enabling). If design isn’t about solutions as much as it is, as Eames said, “an expression of purpose… a method of action,” then perhaps the question any designer interested in email should ask is not “What can we do about it?” but rather: “What will I do with (or without) it?”
The article itself was great. This closing remark sums it up nicely. Email is hated by people who can’t manage their email. Imagine you own a fax machine that also happens to be on the same line as your home telephone. Every day, people you don’t know or know very little either call you or send a fax. You pick up thinking it’s a person and it’s a machine. You hang up, the machine dials back and sends you a fax. That fax is about things you don’t care about, pills, cars, meeting invites from strangers.
Eventually, you grow to hate the telephone and fax machine.
That is email for most people and for those people, they should go find a job where email isn’t a required skill. Go build bridges, go mix cement. Those are great jobs and you’ll be a healthier individual because you’re not sitting behind a desk all day staring at a bright screen.
For the rest of us, we decided to get a separate phone line, one for voice and one for fax. we set the fax in a room that is quiet, no alerts, buzzes, dings or bells go off. When we receive a phone call or fax from someone we don’t know, we inform the person via a return fax, a phone call or that special button that says “unsubscribe”. We then go to our favorite mail order catalogues and opt out from all communications. Finally, we setup rules and conditions in our fax and telephone so only the good stuff comes to us.
For us, the fax machine and telephone work great. I have no complaints. I get 45 emails a day at work and 20 to my personal account. Every hour, I have zero unread messages. Zero..every single work hour. I auto confirm appointment invites if my schedule is free, I keep my contacts up to date, I have a shared calendar and I unsubscribe from every spam I receive immediately before marking it as junk.
Guess how many spam messages I received today to my Inbox + Junk folder? Eight. I received eight spam messages and zero social media emails and zero emails from companies soliciting me.
Because I know how to manage my email. It’s a skill everyone should learn.