Blog Archives
Email Jail
In my Thanksgiving post I expressed gratitude for the “advancing technology which brings us together and allows us to share.” Now for the down side of that technology:
If you’ve been out of the office for any period of time and are at all “conne
cted”, you probably have a few dozen or hundreds of emails to review and possibly act upon. Yes, I have a smartphone which, for several dozen extra dollars, will allow me to keep current while I’m out of the country. But do I really want to take the time to respond to emails when I could be bartering over the price of a set of chopsticks or a taxi ride? When I’m on vacation I try not to check my email every single time the stupid green light flashes. In fact, I’ve been known to not even look at the phone for as long as an hour.
Don’t get me wrong. I really do appreciate staff or colleagues who copy me to make sure I’m “looped” on an issue. I also respect those who copy me out of courtesy. I just wish they would say what they need to say in the email title or first 3 lines. I’d love to be able to read, file, delete, or act upon a message without having to struggle through the two paragraph background when I already have the 3 page email thread included.
These days we all have multiple email and/or social networking accounts. Some we check regularly, some not so much. 
This leaves us with a couple of persistent questions:
- Do you have access to your friend’s super-secret account or just the secret account because, whether you like it or not, your “friends” are secretly ranking you.
- How do you stay out of email jail?
