Literally, emails are causing pollution i.e., did you know each time you send an email you are causing information pollution and adding to carbon footprint to the environment i.e, 4g CO2e for email and 50g CO2e for email with attachment.
Years ago, Hotmail, Postmaster.co.uk and Yahoo mail used to offer 2MB, 3MB and 4MB server space and I used to be far more organized cleaning up my mailbox. What I did not realize was that now with GB’s of server space available I no longer delete emails. Though the carbon print for sending emails is insignificant but imagine the energy support required for such humongous inboxes.
I find 10% of the emails that are addressed to me are relevant, all other emails are in form of email campaigns, newsletters, updates or cc’es etc. One of the most common email is Calendar invite, where 5 people are discussing when they are available to meet. I think mixmax.com has tried to solve the back and forth.
The next issue I face is that people forget to reply as they have too many emails. They may have read the email and might have forget to tag it. I simply drag my emails to to-do icon in Outlook and save it. As I complete the task, I update it. ToDoist/TaskForce/Yesware are tools that can help you organize.
Another interesting aspect of email is I become part of an ongoing email thread. I am copied and asked “see below” where I have to go thru the current context of the conversation. I simply pick up the phone and talk to the sender rather being an email slave and ineffective.
If you are a start- up go for email free Fridays or email free. Use google apps/office 365 for sharing documents, need to ask a question IM, need to get a one word respond DM on Twitter, for meeting notes getminute.com or any collaborative tool.
Don’t subscribe to newsletter and ask sites to switch to subscribe to Twitter or any other social site.
Bottom line, I find lot of people get so many emails that they spend all their day checking and responding to emails. This is making employees life miserable as they end up spending too much time in office reading and responding emails than actual working.
