It’s time to can the email subsidy
There’s a raging debate going on in the blogosphere about how to handle the ever-increasing rush of e-mails stuffing our in-boxes.
Let’s face it, it’s a growing problem causing huge inefficiency (how much time do you spend sifting through/responding to non-essential emails?) and stress.
(Personally, I dread approaching my in-box every day… even worse with my carpal-challenged hands, an unwelcome side-effect of our keyboard-intensive culture).
The various solutions to email overload being discussed: better in-box management, hiring e-mail assistants (nice for some, I suppose), declaring email bankruptcy, reverting to snail mail, and finding new filtering technologies.
But these “solutions” are reactive in that they focus on trying to manage the raucous effect - and not the root cause - of the daily email assault we must endure as a part of modern life.
Certainly, in-box management and new filtering technologies will help, but a better approach would be to reduce the volume of e-mails in circulation, a good chunk of which amounts to… a pile of steaming dung holding us old back from a better life.
Which brings me to this question: why is the cost of sending one e-mail the same as sending 1,000 e-mails? The truth is, after covering the fixed nut of monthly web access, e-mail is essentially free.
Free, for something which has inherent value, means a market of no restraint, no discipline. Free, in this case, means people will plunder the time, attention and privacy of others. (Hence the dung-pile in your in-box.)
But e-maiI is not free. And it shouldn’t be free anyplace outside of schools or hospitals.
Now suppose it cost $.01 every time you sent an e-mail to someone… Wouldn’t this add reason and accountability to the system? Wouldn’t this make folks think twice about blasting out emails, or mindlessly adding people to the cc list? Wouldn’t this encourage people - and companies - to communicate more effectively to justify the real cost of email?
We will be rewarded with a much more efficient work environment and less stress (meaning better health) for all, yielding a huge financial and wellbeing dividend to society, if we move to per unit email pricing and can the e-mail subsidy.
Related IBC posts
April 25, 2008 at 12:47 am
the issue of charging for sending emails was raised many times before. it’s not practical and feasibly impossible. As spam system get better, we get less spam. I managed to get mine down to about 1 a day (i get 200 emails a day).
the problem is “EDUCATION”. you get an email from someone, you either know or don’t, and more often then not, you don’t understand what they want from you. Just like people were thought how to write letters, they should be thought how to write emails. I prefix the subject line of every email i send out with “FYI:”, “Response Required:”, Urgent Response:”
The recipient then knows before he read my email what to do with it.
Makes their life easier i guess. This education starts with every single one of us. Before you send out your next email, read it a couple of times. does it make sense? are your thoughts well put? did you ask for an answer?
I have one post on my blog emailoverloaded.wordpress.com. i will have to put some more things together and write a more structured step-by-step post to try and help.
April 25, 2008 at 7:13 am
Thanks for the comment. Yes, I agree that education is an important factor. I wrote a brief post on this last year, “Fewer, better emails in your company” which I have added as a link to the post above. Please let me know if you do a how-to as it might be something to share here.