How to disconnect from E-mail and reconnect with people and work

I love E-mail.  I check my E-mail all the time.  E-mail doesn’t just make my job easier, E-mail is my job. Oh how I enjoy instantaneously exchanging tons and tons of information with anyone in the world anytime.  E-mail is the greatest inventions of all time…in so far as it is also the worst.

That’s right.  The communications godsend we call E-mail is actually a devilish time-suck, hellbent on sapping focus and creative energy (and interrupting family dinners if you have a BlackBerry or iPhone).  Who doesn’t dread trudging through a stuffed inbox? All day long, we’re pinged with dozens and dozens of messages from colleagues, family, friends, even total strangers.  We get photos.  We click attachments.  We get spammed.  I just hate (love) E-mail.

In a way, E-mail has fallen victim to its own ruthless speed and efficiency.  Critical information gets swiftly buried in lengthy message chains.  Important E-mails get swept away by a relentlessly rising tide of even more important E-mails.  Folders brim with volumes of unread E-newsletters .  It’s message overload.  

Many people I know have no qualms about declaring E-mail bankruptcy by deleting large swaths of unread messages from their inbox.  ”If it’s really all that important, they’ll resend it,” is a common refrain.

I should also mention the indirectness and politics behind Cc and Bcc-ing people can get annoying.

I’ve often wondered if the workplace would be more efficient if we’d have invented the phone after E-mail.  Sheesh, why would I want to write a dozen E-mails when we can wrap up our entire conversation in two minutes using this–how do you pronounce it?–tel-e-phone?

Of course, hardly anyone picks up the phone or checks voice mail anymore.  Society put the phone to rest a long time ago for the very same reasons many people today wish to put the kibosh on E-mails.  Admittedly, I’m starting to fall into the anti-E-mail camp myself.

Naturally, I’m not ready to quit cold turkey. Most (almost all) people rely heavily on E-mail, especially in marketing, PR, and media relations. E-mail is the industry gold standard for business communication, and it is not going away anytime soon.

Still, with the multitude of other communication platforms now available, it makes sense to re-evaluate E-mail and see if there might be a more smarter way to communicate with the folks that matter most to you and your business.

With that in mind, and because I’m the Top Dog at my agency (the only dog, really), I’ve decided to take one small step forward in decreasing my E-mail dependency. My plan: Starting today, I’m not checking E-mails on Thursdays.

Why Thursday?  Hold that thought for a future blog post.  Just because will suffice for now.

So, instead of separating wheat from chaff in my inbox, I will whole-heartedly devote Thursdays to writing, planning, reading, listening and conversing with people in real time, and focus on completing the multitude of office tasks great and small that get shuffled under the rug when there’s a new-message prompt teasing you from the corner of the computer screen.

Don’t confuse my plan with going Off The Grid. On the contrary, I’m encouraging people to contact me by any other means possible. Call me or send me a text to my mobile. Direct Message me on Twitter (which guarantees our communication will be short and sweet). Video conference with me on Skype. Flare gun.  Smoke signals.  It doesn’t even have to be all that urgent. Let’s just give E-mail a rest for a day and get things done.

So people don’t think I’m a jerk and ignoring them, here’s what I’m saying on my E-mail’s auto-response message.

Subjet:

It’s No E-mail Thursday…but you can still reach me!

Message:

ZOINKS!

I’ve stopped monitoring my E-mail inbox on Thursdays. Reason: today is all about creativity, personal interaction, and getting stuff done at work. I’ll read and respond to your E-mail as soon as I can…tomorrow.

If you are media or a client–or anyone else for that matter–you can still get a hold of me today via Twitter, Skype, Google Chat, or calling or texting my mobile phone (see below).

I appreciate your patience and flexibility and look forward to connecting with you soon!

This is both a social and technology experiment for me. We’ll see how it goes after a few weeks. Maybe I’ll cave. Maybe I’ll just scrap the idea. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll decide to cut back on E-mail even more. If it saves time, increases productivity, and increases the quality of my relationships, the exercise will be worth it for both me and my clients.