Tech Column

words by > Lee Gimpel

Where does the day go?” you might ask yourself on the commute home. If your job tends to put you in front of a computer, the answer may be very simple: email. Indeed, while we might have gotten giddy a decade ago hearing, “You’ve got mail!” it’s now more exceptional not to have mail. Technology analysts at IDC estimate that 2007 will see 10.1 trillion messages sent worldwide. And that’s not even counting spam and e-newsletters.

The glut of envelope icons isn’t just frustrating, it’s costly as well. A survey from Cohesive Knowledge Solutions covering the United States reveals that employees spend more than 40% of their workday on email—and consider more than a third of that time a waste—costing employers some $300 billion a year in lost productivity and profits.

What to do?

First, emails are like presents—the more you give, the more you get. Mike Song, author of Th e Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You (BerrettKoehler, 2007), says that the first step in getting less email is sending less. Don’t “reply all” out of habit; instead, ask, “Do I really need to copy other people?”

“But I don’t needlessly send emails!” you’ll self-righteously protest. You might not be aware that you do. Song and his co-authors found that while more than 75% of workers say that others overuse “reply all,” less than 15% admit to doing it themselves.

Second, let your email ripen a bit. Instead of feeling compelled to reply immediately, set aside blocks of time to answer emails. Setting your “check for messages” function to a half hour versus every minute will help, as will closing your email application completely. The change will give you email-less blocks of time—a liberating idea today if ever there was one—and will force you to be concise with a limited amount of “reply time.”

In many cases, you can also kill two or three messages with one because people often send one whole thought in five separate emails composed over the course of 20 minutes. Song and his co-authors posit that a slow-down is good for the brain, too. “We believe the interruptions caused by constantly checking email prevent professionals from focusing on high-impact, deep-thought projects that require concentration,” he says.

Finally, if you don’t need a reply, say so.

There’s no reason why you can’t huddle with coworkers and resolve to not send emails saying basically “okay” or “thanks” unless it’s an extraordinary situation. Go even further and tell those with whom you communicate that it’s also fine to have an old-fashioned conversation. Five minutes on the phone or in-person often saves a dozen two-minute emails.