Let's consign e-mail to the trash folder

One of our clients just e-mailed us a 12MB attachment that nearly broke our meagre 100MB UK2.net inbox (other, better e-mail providers are available). Minutes later, that same client sent the same document again, with a small edit. It didn't get through. Why is e-mail used for this? Most of the projects we undertake are driven largely by e-mails.

A man-made problem

A lot of this correspondence could be avoided, particularly the endless e-mailing and re-e-mailing of attachments. But that's not all. E-mail is an outdated tool built on the old idea of sending mail to an individual. Our inboxes are overloaded with conversations and information that doesn't belong there. The result: We miss important messages, lose information and feel guilty about not being able to keep on top of our overloaded inboxes.

Reclaiming the inbox has become a popular topic in recent months. Although Google Wave was ultimately a laughing stock, had it been pitched as a solution for small, collaborative projects (rather than a new, all-encompassing communications tool), it would have worked as a drop-in replacement for e-mail. Then there are products like Xobni or Gmail's Priority Inbox (see clip above), which organise your e-mail more effectively, enabling improved search and provide conversation information by individual contact.

Yet some people say we should go much further than that and jettison e-mail altogether. One of these revolutionaries is Luis Suarez (not the Uruguayan footballer), author of "A world without e-mail" - a post on trailblazing social media news site Mashable. As Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist in the IBM Software Group division, he has successfully reduced the number of e-mails he receives from 40 a day to 17 a week over two-and-a-half years.

Current uses for e-mail

As Suarez says, e-mail is really only suitable for one-to-one, private communications, yet we use it for all of the following:

• Newsletters and announcements
• Project status updates
• Queries and questions
• Project management and delegating tasks
• Sharing files
• Smalltalk

Disadvantages of e-mail

All of the above are not only incredibly inefficient and confusing, they also offer no visibility to anyone but the person the mail is sent to - provided they read it in the first place. What's more, e-mail generates a pressure to reply promptly and politely (imagine how much time we waste writing "Dear..." and "Best regards..." in replies). And for some people, reaching "inbox zero" is an impossible dream - until the temptation to hit "Select all" then "Del" becomes too great.

Replacements for e-mail

Yet, all of the applications we use e-mail for can be replaced by simpler, better and more effective tools. The most obvious thing to do is to start sharing information and files more openly with colleagues and clients. The following tools allow us to do just that:

• Microblogging - quick Twitter-style status updates and links allow colleagues and managers to keep track of activity and keep up to date with the latest developments.
• Wikis - a wiki is a great way to keep track of the status of a project, to set out roles, guidelines and instructions, and to document progress over time.
• File sharing - Dropbox and similar online tools allow files to be stored and edited in a single place
• Blog - the place to make announcements, respond to frequently asked questions (these can be linked to at any later date) and provide updates, be they personal or product-related.

Eliminating redundancy for a happier working life

This and many more easy-to-implement solutions not only allow e-mail to get on with what it is best at (longer, private conversations), they also save time by freeing you up to share your knowledge and delegate tasks in more effective, valuable and visible ways. And you'll never receive a 12MB attachment again.

Comments

[Vlado]

I like the clarity of the message. It seems that we are going in that direction, but the ones who will most likely benefit from it (large multi-nationals) will be slowest to adjust.