'Email Is Making Us Miserable' (newyorker.com) 122
Cal Newport, writing for New Yorker: A study, published in 2019, looked at long-term trends in the health of a group of nearly five thousand Swedish workers. They found that repeated exposure to "high information and communication technology demands" (translation: a need to be constantly connected) were associated with "suboptimal" health outcomes. This trend persisted even after they adjusted the statistics for potential complicating factors such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, health behavior, body-mass index, job strain, and social support. Of course, we don't really need data to capture something that so many of us feel intuitively. I recently surveyed the readers of my blog about e-mail. "It's slow and very frustrating. . . . I often feel like email is impersonal and a waste of time," one respondent said. "I'm frazzled -- just keeping up," another admitted. Some went further. "I feel an almost uncontrollable need to stop what I'm doing to check email," one person reported. "It makes me very depressed, anxious and frustrated."
When employees are miserable, they perform worse. They're also more likely, as the French labor minister warned, to burn out, leading to increased health-care costs and expensive employee turnover. A Harvard Business School professor found that giving a group of management consultants predictable time off from e-mail increased the percentage of them who planned to stay at the firm "for the long term" from forty per cent to fifty-eight per cent. E-mail's power to makes us unhappy also has more philosophical implications. There are two hundred and thirty million knowledge workers in the world, which includes, according to the Federal Reserve, more than a third of the U.S. workforce. If this massive population is being made miserable by a slavish devotion to in-boxes and chat channels, then this adds up to a whole lot of global miserableness! From a utilitarian perspective, this level of suffering cannot be ignored -- especially if there is something that we might be able to do to alleviate it. Given these stakes, it's all the more surprising that we spend so little time trying to understand the source of this discontent. Many in the business community tend to dismiss the psychological toll from e-mail as an incidental side effect caused by bad in-box habits or a weak constitution. I've come to believe, however, that much deeper forces are at play in generating our mismatch with this tool, including some that get at the very core of what drives us as humans.
When employees are miserable, they perform worse. They're also more likely, as the French labor minister warned, to burn out, leading to increased health-care costs and expensive employee turnover. A Harvard Business School professor found that giving a group of management consultants predictable time off from e-mail increased the percentage of them who planned to stay at the firm "for the long term" from forty per cent to fifty-eight per cent. E-mail's power to makes us unhappy also has more philosophical implications. There are two hundred and thirty million knowledge workers in the world, which includes, according to the Federal Reserve, more than a third of the U.S. workforce. If this massive population is being made miserable by a slavish devotion to in-boxes and chat channels, then this adds up to a whole lot of global miserableness! From a utilitarian perspective, this level of suffering cannot be ignored -- especially if there is something that we might be able to do to alleviate it. Given these stakes, it's all the more surprising that we spend so little time trying to understand the source of this discontent. Many in the business community tend to dismiss the psychological toll from e-mail as an incidental side effect caused by bad in-box habits or a weak constitution. I've come to believe, however, that much deeper forces are at play in generating our mismatch with this tool, including some that get at the very core of what drives us as humans.
Bad headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Email isn't making people miserable... being connected to work outside normal office hours is making people miserable. Use a separate phone for work, put it down when the work day ends. Problem solved.
Re:Bad headline (Score:5, Informative)
Bad headline because the headline says "Email" but in the text, the study is not about e-mail, it is about "information and communication technology" connectivity in general.
Re:Bad headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Close but not quite in general but specifically among workers and with regard to productivity. So this is a work related study not a life study. The study finds work intruding into personal time (as facilitated by information and communication technology) is actually negatively impacting productivity. Hence my suggestion of leaving the conduit of work technology behind at the end of the work day and its alerts, messages, calls, and other communication attempts with it.
I do this already and the boss will stop being annoyed as your work output increases relative to your 'responsive' peers over time. If a manager can't accept that I remind them to technology workers aren't OT exempt, they are effectively asking me to be oncall and depending on how they utilize the ability to contact me might even put them on the hook to pay for the entire oncall period (24/7) rather than just on call incidents. That is a hail mary, if it doesn't work I'll let someone else fight the fight in court and just fire them and find another employer who cares more about results than control.
Re:Bad headline (Score:5, Insightful)
What really makes me miserable is chat programs where instant response is demanded.
Emails are decent because they can be put on hold if there's no urgency. I do read them as they drop in, but can then make a more elaborate response.
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I really don't know what to say about the story: In many jobs exchanging information between people is a non-small part of the work. You can always try to find better alternatives and you should probably cut on non-essential emails but you're always gonna have to the info through some channel.
Checking only at specified intervals might increase your productivity since you're not being interrupted as muc
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Email might sound good until you get in conversations with cover-your-butt artists that exponentiate with long strings of CCs that are impossible to follow. IM-ish apps at least have some advantage there.
But the Swedes cited could have problems, and the rest of the world, with this single big problem: Trouble disconnecting and having a real life.
This said, I think weird statistics * weird observations == results worth ignoring.
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What really makes me miserable is chat programs where instant response is demanded.
Emails are decent because they can be put on hold if there's no urgency. I do read them as they drop in, but can then make a more elaborate response.
Right tool for the job. Chat sucks when it's a free for all, but it works well in tight teams were you know and like everyone in the team, so have some confidence that an interruption has value. I rarely use email anymore, usually only for more formal or external comms, I found that a lot of people revert back to email when a phone call would be better. IT is full of socially inept nerds who hide behind email, and that comes with its own problems.
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What really makes me miserable is chat programs where instant response is demanded.
Emails are decent because they can be put on hold if there's no urgency. I do read them as they drop in, but can then make a more elaborate response.
Chat can be put on hold just like email, I do it all the time. If someone send me a chat message while I am busy, I ignore it and get back to it later, just the same as if I got a email while busy. If something came up while I was chatting with someone, I put a "brb" in the chat, handle the other thing, then go back to the chat afterwards. Just treat chat as a shorter form of email.
Phone call, on the other hand, is much more problematic. Once you took the call you have to keep paying attention to it. W
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Unfortunately my experience is that if you try to avoid them then they start the "woodpecker" method of hammering for attention.
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This has actually been overall positive to our team's productivity. Now that people get timely responses from instant
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Microsoft Teams - and someone that won't stop spam you until you answer. That's under work hours when I had some more important thing to attend to.
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Yeah...I mean, with work, I actually MUCH prefer email over chats/IM in that email is asynchronous, and I can get to it when I have a break.
I don't like Teams/Skype, etc as much with IM's...as that they can chime in at any time and interrupt your chain of thought, etc.
They're as bad as when we were in the office and some idiot would
Re: Bad headline (Score:1)
Re: Bad headline (Score:5, Interesting)
I use a blend and all during business hours.
Email is better for juggling multiple longer haul issues. Emails cost less time than calls, don't put people on the spot, and work better for conveying a large set of complex information because they contain visuals and can be re-read. While that guy I emailed is digesting what I sent and I can move on to working on the next issue.
Phone calls are less efficient because you have to waste time on formalities, wait for everyone to be available at the same time, occupy the entire group for the time of every other member's work time, etc. So I fall back to a phone call when people NEED to be put on the spot, just don't seem to be getting it, or when a number of simple steps are definitely going to require a lot of coordinated back and forth (worst case for email which can add days between steps).
Re: Bad headline (Score:1)
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I try to physically talk to people ONLY as a last resort...it just takes so much time, and everything else going on at the time has to halt.
But, some times, it is required, but I find that for most things, it is not.
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Yup, the better answer is always going to depend on the specific dynamic. Time is absolutely critical and valuable. Get as much done as you can while spending as little interactive time as you can. You'll quickly discover you actually get more done than others who are always "busy busy busy", you'll make fewer errors, and you'll actually have more on your hands. Not only that but your rested and calm mind will start to see how often those busy and stressed co-workers are dropping and picking back up balls,
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I learned from Scrooge McDuck when I was 5... "work smarter, not harder."
And without the need of your father's suspenders. Hehehe.
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Not sure if this is news to you, but you have always been replaceable. The secret is making yourself invaluable to the point where it costs too damn much to replace you. Also, if a company does get rid of people for the reason you stated then that tells you that you should be working somewhere else because they are apparently a pretty crappy employer. I know people are always shocked when I say this, but there are good employers out there, it is just your responsibility to find them.
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WE NEED UNIONS or EU work rules that (Score:2)
WE NEED UNIONS or EU work rules that stop that level of abuse
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"Then what happens in the next round of layoffs, which we all know will happen? They're going to go after the Johnny punchclock types who never contribute more than the bare minimum. You're in competition for your job with the whole world now. You're replaceable."
From what I've seen? Some asshat picks people largely at random without any sort of real regard for skill, revenue, etc. But if we pretend the supposed bean counters could actually count beans; this study shows that people who take their connectivi
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Yeah, but you got to undersand (Score:2)
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The problem is more complex than that. It has became official form of communication, however not all official data you really need to know about or care about.
Email is a Push form of communication, while most of the information in these emails will be better served as a Pull form of information.
I may not need to know at 1:00 today that a server will be down for maintenance tomorrow at 5:00. However if at 5:30 I get people saying they are having problems, I should be able to pull the information up to let
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This is what a wiki is for. Get everyone to add info to that.
They need training though.
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Re: Bad headline (Score:2)
I have, it was fantastic. People took pride in adding and fixing documentation, well some did. One person had a couple of weeks to make sure it was accurate. When it is made part of the job it works well.
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When I'm working from home, mail gets checked about three times a day. A long time ago, someone suggested using the "Dr. Pepper" schedule for checking email: 10, 2, and 4 --- from the label that appeared, back in the day, on their bottled soda. (Adjust those times to fit your own situation.) If you're checking it more often than that, you're probably not getting your real work done.
If I'm working in an office situation, I'll be
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If you're checking it more often than that, you're probably not getting your real work done.
Unless your real work is responding to email inquires, at which point you get fired.
That's the problem with absolutes. That's the problem with having so narrow view of the world that you don't understand anything other than your individual context.
I have cycles where we have a product release and I'm the high level point of contact for questions and technical assistance. During those cycles my job is to pick up the phone and respond to email. My job is to make high profile customers feel like they're gettin
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OK. I'll agree that "real work" is very much job-dependent (your job != my job). Emails, IMHO, are for detailed exchanges---those where a phone call isn't able to reliably able to accurately convey information. Maybe I misread the OP but I think what the subject of the original story is getting at is the use of email as a substitute for chat sessions---where you're almost expected to have one eye focused on your Inbox
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^ this
I remember 20ish years ago when getting ready to get married and would be away on honeymoon, work just accepted the fact that would be out of pocket for a couple of weeks and didn't even ask about how I might be contacted.
Now employers think nothing of asking employees going on vacation "will you have access to your mobile phone?" And it's not just life and death things, they will actually call people over trivial matters that could easily wait or even just be figured out by someone else.
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Yeah.. the whole point of email is to NOT be constantly connected.
You send me an email, I'll respond when I get to it.
Chat / Slack / Disrupt / WhatsApp however, is a different matter.
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Better solutions to email woes, anyone? (Score:2)
Not a bad FP, but I don't like your Subject, which seems to be a recursive joke in complaining about a bad headline. Hard for me to formulate an alternative because your angle is unclear from your brevity. But mostly your concern strikes me as minor, so...
My new Subject is about my interest in finding a better email system. I'm open to any input, but (1) I've already looked at a LOT of email systems and dislike all of them more or less strongly, and (2) I think I know what I want and I just can't understand
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No. The article is misleading: the first paragraph is about the right to disconnect, but the rest of the story describes studies that specifically address the use of email etc. during work hours.
I recognize the effects described in the study. When email (or IM, etc.) comes in while I'm working on something, my stress level rises even before I've seen the content of the message. That's because so many of those messages demand immediate action, demanding priority over what I'm currently doing. This makes it i
IM is making many of us miserable (Score:5, Funny)
Particularly Microsoft Teams. It's slow, clunky, noisy and an attention hog. Slack at least feels much slicker when I have to use it, which is rare these days since most corporations are crazy about how Teams is included in Office 365 (note: if you think Slack is expensive now, just wait until Teams has no competition).
I'm an older Millennial. I grew up with IM. I fucking hate work IM most days. It's designed to maximize the number of "conversations" you can have at the same time. You can ignore email while you work most of the time. You can easily sort it. Don't tell me that it's bloody email that is killing people.
Re:IM is making many of us miserable (Score:5, Insightful)
Particularly Microsoft Teams. It's slow, clunky, noisy and an attention hog. Slack at least feels much slicker when I have to use it, which is rare these days since most corporations are crazy about how Teams is included in Office 365 (note: if you think Slack is expensive now, just wait until Teams has no competition).
I'm an older Millennial. I grew up with IM. I fucking hate work IM most days. It's designed to maximize the number of "conversations" you can have at the same time. You can ignore email while you work most of the time. You can easily sort it. Don't tell me that it's bloody email that is killing people.
I think an underlying issue that you have put your finger on is the multi-tasking myth. That because of email or Slack/Teams, we can work on an indefinite number of projects with an indefinite number of interruptions, and the tools make it all possible.
Most of the time I just want to be left alone with one main problem to solve, and one minor problem to work when I need to get my mind temporarily off the main problem. And while I'm at it, in this perfect world, neither problem is people.
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That because of email or Slack/Teams, we can work on an indefinite number of projects
It would be a lot easier if the Slack UI were written to handle an indefinite number of channels without having heart attacks (rendering issues).
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I'm an older Millennial. I grew up with IM. I fucking hate work IM most days. It's designed to maximize the number of "conversations" you can have at the same time. You can ignore email while you work most of the time. You can easily sort it. Don't tell me that it's bloody email that is killing people.
It's both tools actually. And if you're an "older" worker, you know damn well how email can be just as annoying as IM. Emails piling up sorted by thread/subject vs. Teams IMs piling up sorted by meeting room/topic. Same shitty problems, different interfaces.
Not sure how you fix either issue, other than sensibly getting rid of all spam, and then limiting the number of updates per day. The problem with an always-on-always-connected FOMO Generation, is they seem to be quite addicted to receiving dozens of
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rant: I get why people use Electron to develop "desktop" apps these days: You get a web app and a desktop app from one codebase but it seems soo wasteful on resources. Also, I'm amazed
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Particularly Microsoft Teams. It's slow, clunky, noisy and an attention hog. Slack at least feels much slicker when I have to use it,
The key difference here (at least in my experience) is that Slack is specifically Team Chat that puts the user in control. Whereas Teams is Microsoft bundling of absolutely everything into one interface and it sucks at all of them. It's also centrally controlled so don't have full control over what you want to be a part of. I fucking hate Teams. Team chat works when you have control of which chats you are a part of, and limit them to specific people you get on with. This idea that anybody anywhere can just
There are two types of people in this world (Score:1)
Please don't be the first type.
Three [Re:There are two types of people ...] (Score:2)
Those who generate more e-mail than they receive, and those who receive more e-mails than they generate.
...and those who post long rants complaining about the internet as a comment on every single article on slashdot. Several times.
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Oh no! I receive the same number of emails as I generate!
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Toxic workplaces and... (Score:5, Insightful)
... low wages is actually the cause of the misery. Email has very little to do with it, the reality is most jobs suck and many workplaces are toxic largely because they are anti-democratic top down organizations. The reality is how we run our society sucks we should be building institutions that preventing corporate malfeasance and abuse rather then enabling them.
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I travel a fair bit (at least I used to prior to the China virus), and I agree with you 100%
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Hmm...you're wanting to reshape the entire structure of a work environment, boss and workers...someting that has existed since the dawn of time,
Re:Toxic workplaces and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Life *requires* labor. Civilized life requires *even more* labor. That's just reality.
Nobody wants to do the work, but somebody's gotta. And there is a LOT of it that needs doing! Including the widely-hated dirty work. Civilized life is utterly dependent upon it.
If everyone could have luxury without doing this work, then nobody would do this work, and it would all fall apart. We MUST find some way of getting people to actually do all this work, and enabling everyone to retire at 30 won't cut it! The current options are: wages that pay enough for people to earn a living without economically-migrating everyone out of the labor pool, or slavery.
This is the way it has been throughout ALL of recorded history and even before that. This game is not going to be changed by some widespread shift in values, laws, or economic policy. It's not possible! The only potential game-changer here, the ONLY one, is labor automation.
When we have our army of robots who are deliriously happy to do all the work for us, THEN it will be economically feasible to ensure that everyone has plenty of access to leisure and luxuries for their entire lives. Until then, all talk of such things is just socialist idealism that will lead to the same place that it always does: ruined economies (and sometimes bloody wars and genocide, historically speaking).
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Life *requires* labor. Civilized life requires *even more* labor.
Wow your simple minded post is blowing my mind here. I guess we still should have slavery, your whole post reads as someone who would have defended the institution of slavery. Just because you've always known capitalist society as we understanding working in a particular way, doesn't mean there are serious problems with how we do things that are causing all sorts of stupid bad things to happen.
You are so visionless so lacking in a capacity for critical thought you can't see how things can be improved.
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If your take away from reading that post is that the poster is advocating for the return of slavery, I think it's you that lacks a capacity for critical thinking.
Dude, the man is giving bullshit spiel that things are the best they already can be, if you can't see that you're blind. It's just another pro status quo corporate screed masquerading as wisdom, totally ignoring things like the 2008 bailouts.
http://politicalgates.blogspot... [blogspot.com]
Alayon grayson grilling the fed inspector of the central bank on where the 2008 money went:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But continue to think I'm merely some uneducated rube.
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Well, obviously you disagree. Though you are very quick to insult, and very slow to offer solid counter-arguments. It should also be obvious that having a different vision does not make one "visionless."
No, I was not advocating for a return of slavery. Not even remotely. I will point out, however, that there was a time in our history when the two choices for the human condition were:
1) Civilized nation or city/state built on the backs of slave labor.
2) Barbarian tribes.
This situation changed, but it was
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Life *requires* labor. Civilized life requires *even more* labor. That's just reality.
Sure. But what is not required is toxic asshole bosses watching over the workers and the threat of getting fired because the boss was in a bad mood.
Almost no vacation time and the risk of getting fired if you actually ask to be off work for a week and a half? Also not required.
Most of Europe has several weeks mandatory vacation and better employment protections, and people are not dying en masse in the streets from starvation because every business is going under from the draconian labor laws.
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I think this is what contributes to email being so annoying.
If you're not in a place where you can respond effectively to authority figures (broadly defined -- bosses, clients, anyone with enough influence to make your life hell) who are sending you any kind of electronic communications, it's like being muted and having to deal with the consequences.
At one point I was on the go a lot and had little time for detailed email responses, but was being barraged via email by bosses and co-workers sitting at desks.
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Another middle aged fake Socialist suburbanite slashdot guy does not want to go to work. News at 11. This forum is full of you spoiled western fucks. You guys need to travel and see how the rest of the world lives.
Maybe you hadn't noticed anyone with a brain doesn't give a rats ass about left/right ideology we only care about who's fucking up our chances at surviving on this planet at this point, was anyone who is a real genuine bonified nerd approve of how Mr trump handled Covid? Probably not, accurate scientific knowledge of how our universe works is our only fucking hope of surviving our species stupidity and general tendency towards idiocy.
So no, the fact you think I'm lazy proves you're an idiot. We live in a
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we only care about who's fucking up our chances at surviving on this planet at this point,
I don't care about that. Every generation in humanity has an apocalypse myth, just as you shouldn't buy into the left v right, you also shouldn't buy into apocalypse myths
was anyone who is a real genuine bonified nerd approve of how Mr trump handled Covid?
It was handled about the same in most large Western Countries, so the fact you singled out Trump says more about you than him. Also, a no true Scotsmen fallacy...
We live in a world of ridiculous amounts of unaccountable corporate power, where our basic rights....riding roughshod over the law and we live in an endless sea of corporate lobbying and corruption....I live in a lawless oligarchy...a lameduck congress that rubber stamps whatever the rich want....the real nerds are actually paying attention to what is actually happening and the high crimes and misdemeanors the very rich and powerful are getting away with in our society.
You sound like a lunatic that's ready to storm the Capitol. Switch off the news and we live in the most peaceful and prosperous time in human history. But sure, the end is near..
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I did not say anything about politics or left/right in my post. YOU DID. Jesus Christ you fake socialists seriously just need to go away and re-examine your life.
Dude the whole concept of "Fake socialist" is a fucked up comment when it's obvious the way we've set up our society has serious flaws because of the endless battles for basic things like to repair and own our own shit with the corporate world which we should not be having.
No one should be having to fight to repair and own their own shit, this only happened because silicon valley tech companies have so bastardized and corrupted the law to get rid of any property rights for the public in copyright law and co
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If you think top down hierarchies are bad, wait til you try a fully democratic one [youtube.com]
Top down is a thing because it works.
It works so well lobbyists have lobbied away are basic freedoms to own our own software and culture, dumbass you live in a lawless oligarchy and are entirely politically and historically illiterate. You may think I'm just some chump, but the upper classes preach free market capitalism to you they've always been taking state subsidies since forever, since you're so well trained to not see the reality around you I don't expect much.
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/... [imf.org]
But keep telling us how the free market fair
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But continue to believe we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Strawman. Which probably explains why you're so angry about nothing... .
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But continue to believe we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Strawman. Which probably explains why you're so angry about nothing... .
Nothing straw man about your phone, your operating system and every piece of technology broadcasting data back to google, EA, valve, activision and microsoft. Just so you can participate in the culture around you.
But keep believing you live in a lawful society, not in an out of control lawless oligarchy who's bought the government lock stock and barrel. Nor the awesome bank bailouts in 2008 for which nobody was punished. Keep believing in the rule of law buddy.
http://politicalgates.blogspot... [blogspot.com]
The realit
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Nothing straw man about your phone, your operating system and ....
I said: "Top down is a thing because it works."
You argued that "But continue to believe we live in the best of all possible worlds"
You're not arguing my point, you created your own and argued against that. That is the definition of a Straw man.
Your failure to recognise such trivial logic probably explains why you are angry about lots of other things.
I also asked you to give us an example of a society you think works better which you ignored, likely because it exposes the glaring flaw in your argumen
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I also asked you to give us an example of a society you think works better which you ignored, likely because it exposes the glaring flaw in your argument.
You didn't expose a god damn thing, and I didn't make any argument other then to put some effort into actually analyzing how new political forms of power have emerged outside the state. Copyright law + internet + software as licensed supercharged software companies ability to legally hack and steal software from the public, there is no reason for 99% of software to be client-server or software as a service anything unless they were 1) trying to artificially inflate the prices and 2) steal software from the
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and I didn't make any argument...
That was my point. You used a lot of of words to demonstrate that once again.
Studies say... (Score:1)
this style of propaganda peddling is no longer effective. Give it a rest, policy driven "science"
Waste of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely do not agree that it is a waste of time. It's true that when people don't actually read the content of an email which contains actual information, time is wasted, but that seems like more of an issue of laziness than a problem with email.
In contrast, you have meetings. There are people (I am looking at you, sales) who will convene a meeting just to convene a meeting. Have a question which can be answered in two words? Call a meeting. Have a process kicking off that we have been through with the customer many times before and do for hundreds of other customers every year? Call a meeting. Have a simple issue to talk through with the customer? Call a pre-meeting at which you suggest having another pre-meeting before the actual meeting. Have a contract with nuanced redlines that need to be reviewed? Make sure you call the meeting before the other side has a chance to look at the redlines so that absolute maximum time is wasted and then resolve it by agreeing to turn another draft of the redlines.
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If you think that is bad, try Slack (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, as others have pointed out it's more about how we use these tools. But also true that the tools themselves are geared towards forcing a 24/7 up to the minute, contact me anywhere, I will respond to you in seconds, mentality. Slack is awful in that regard.
But...and a big but, its also true that most folks are not in a position where they feel they can turn off their email/slack lest they be seen as being below average employee subject to the next round of 'dowsizing'. I personally think we are more fearful in this regard than is justified. I don't think of my colleagues as being lazy if they don't respond to an email hyper fast or at 2am, it's likely they feel the same way about me.
And yet we are all still Slacking on our lunch break, or at midnight and then feeling miserable as a result.
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Yes, as others have pointed out it's more about how we use these tools. But also true that the tools themselves are geared towards forcing a 24/7 up to the minute, contact me anywhere, I will respond to you in seconds, mentality. Slack is awful in that regard.
Slack has a sleep button. It's not its fault that you don't/aren't allowed to use it.
FWIW, I've been using Slack for about 5 years now, I do contracting so move jobs about once year. At every job I make it clear at the start that I am uncontactable after I leave the office. If someone calls or msgs me I simply ignore it.br I get that not everyone has a job like mine, but I worked to get myself into this position specifically because I value my personal life after work.
Working at a university (Score:2)
we use email as the main way to conduct any communication, between a very diverse group of people located all over the place. It's necessary of course, but it sucks :( Even worse now with the pandemic.
It's supposed to be an asynchronous communication platform, but the frequency of its use has moved it to a more synchronous territory, and it creates this need to keep refreshing or being buzzed every so often from the notifications. Muting email on the phone and keeping email tabs closed helps a bit.
Dumb (Score:5, Informative)
Right, so if email is making people miserable, why are people (inexplicably, in my mind) SPRINTING toward every new even-faster-and-more-immediate communication tool: FB, Twitter, Insta, etc ?
I work in logistics and transportation. I start my day with 150-200 new emails (not including spam), and probably receive another 200 over the course of a day, send maybe 300 total. Is this a lot? I pretty much clear my inbox daily except for the 20-30 active issues I want to keep on top of.
We can't all be New Yorker journalists, sipping a chai latte in our tweed pajamas while tapping out some maundering essay while cozily ensconced in the Hamptons. If someone can't NOT check their emails...that's not really email's fault as a tech, it's a person's own OCD. They probably couldn't ignore a telephone ringing, either - did we blame phones?
Re: (Score:2)
send maybe 300 total.
Really? 30 emails an hour based on a 10 hour day? 1 email every 2 minutes? Sounds dramatic.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's see, I was guessing but sure, I'll check.
2/24 - I sent 200 even
2/25 - I sent 191
2/26 - I sent 266
3/1 - I sent 299
3/2 - I sent 235
OK, yes, it seems I was exaggerating a bit. Felt like more.
So your point was what, again?
Re: (Score:2)
tweed pajamas
More like tattered boxers. Keep that image in mind the next time you expect a reply ASAP.
Advocacy study? (Score:2)
There has been an EU-wide movement towards preventing employers from encroaching on employees' off-hours. Was this one of the studies commissioned to justify that?
It's going to be worse with "work from home" in place. The study probably should be updated to reflect what's going on now.
Tech problem, or people problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, My Experience Is Different (Score:3)
Email? No, Slack/Teams/Workplace (Score:5, Informative)
Email isn't making us sick.The expectation to be connected all the time is making us sick, and that expectation comes mainly from instant messaging.
Slack. Teams. Workplace (the Facebook for work).
When Slack (and other messaging software) says they want to "replace Email", they're making it worse. Senders (managers!) expect an immediate answer to chat messages much more than to an email message. Recipients have notifications turned on their chat software so their device can go DING DING PAY ATTENTION NOW at any time, keeping the recipient fully stressed and alert at all times. Managers punish workers who don't respond immediately whenever they send a message.
Why does anyone feel email needs replacing? Because people don't reply as fast as the sender wants. Why don't they reply? Because they're on their own time, or overworked, or already stressed-out. Making the messaging medium more insistent and intrusive only increases the stress and speeds the burn-out.
Many of the upper level managers I work for (Score:2)
Has someone to "read their email for them".
Either because they're "too busy" or too stupid to click on the app or the emails.
It's easy to ditch the work phone (Not gonna use my personal phone for work unless you're paying the whole bill) at the end of the day.
Not so easy to ditch the 24x7 14 weeks a year (with comp time you can never use) on-call phone.
Email is just another tool. Use it, or it will use you.
And let's not even get started on the coworker who BCCs all all the managers of another employee w
Spam is what's making us miserable (Score:2)
Well, at least me. Fortunately, the subject lines for the shed plans, tinnitus cures, miracle weight-loss powder come-ons are easy to identify when sorting by "Subject" and doesn't eat up more than about a minute to "click->shift-click" and drag the lot to the Junk folder.
I'm already blocking email from over 36,000 IP addresses because they're nothing but spam firehoses. (And that's not counting the stuff blocked by spamhaus and the like.)
anxious people gonna anxious (Score:3)
Oh my god I can't believe I need to point out that a big advantage of Email is that it's asynchronous. This was realized 30 frikkin years ago. I can communicate for work at times that I CHOOSE, when I have the energy, time and attention to spare. Sometimes that's morning, sometimes noon, sometimes after dinner and sometimes late at night.
This a feature, not a bug. For the most part, I suspect that the people who constantly stress about email, also stress about in-person meetings, zoom meetings, their relationships, their relatives, their kids, and every other thing in the world. These are the people who lose their sanity to doomscrolling. In other words, naturally anxious people are gonna be anxious about everything.
It's not a problem with the structure of the email. The issue lies in the brain of the user. To be clear: I'm not blaming. It's just how some people are wired. But the email client isn't the problem. Naturally anxious people need cognitive and/or behavioral therapy to help them deal with their issues. And sometimes a bit of chemical assistance as well.
Uhm, don't you confuse that with Instant Messaging (Score:5, Insightful)
The main thing about E-Mail is that it's like regular mail. I can choose when I read and respond to it. The other person has no idea when I got that E-Mail. E-Mail isn't "realtime", it's like a poor man's issue tracker.
On the other hand Instant Messaging often has status indications telling the other person when I'm available or if I've read a message.
Re: (Score:3)
On the other hand Instant Messaging often has status indications telling the other person when I'm available or if I've read a message.
Which is why I only use IM with people I like. Why would anyone encourage strangers to interrupt them at any time?
IM for people I like
Email for people I have to work with
Ticketing system for everything else
And all of those are ignored after quitting time.
Read work email on company time only (Score:2)
If you have exceptionally good management, people who understand what an actual emergency is and that you will be paid extra for dealing with a problem after hours, you may allow them to reach you on a private email address and a private phone number, but you better be buddies with your boss before you even consider that.
its not email, it's people choosing to be a victim (Score:2)
"high information and communication technology demands" (translation: a need to be constantly connected) ...
email does NOT require constant connectivity, and CHOOSING to 'instantly' read and reply to IMs is a very bad life choice... especially while driving.
Read and respond to email no more than twice per day, once in the morning, and once in the afternoon. Reply to IMs only from close friends and family during a lunch break, and for an hour before dinner. That's all. No Facebook, Twitter, or social media except during scheduled 'entertainment' time - while watching a movie, listening to music, and NOT while w
Webmail users (Score:2)
"I feel an almost uncontrollable need to stop what I'm doing to check email,"
Get a fucking email reader, install decent filters and you never have to 'go check' anymore.
Email = asynchronous comms = good (Score:2)
The headline, to put it politely, is absurd but it's typical insultingly bad passive-aggressive posting style low quality click8. (You don't have to be this way, yet you choose to. It's lazy and sloppy at best and seems to reflect contempt for your audience. Choose enlightenment and quality posts instead.)
Email doesn't coerce immediate response. I can respond or not as I like. It's convenient, readable on many devices without special software, archivable and otherwise insanely handy.
Toxic work policies wher
One to one no problem (Score:2)
I have no issues with one to one email. It comes in and I can handle it as needed. It's the flood of automated emails and the one to many emails that overwhelm. I'm responsible for them because I was sent a copy, but very little. if anything, actually pertains to me or my job. It's like a time-waste multiplier. People just don't consider the time investment of the receiver.
Emperor's new clothes (Score:2)
Of course a "slow", "impersonal" asynchronous technology makes them "very depressed, anxious and frustrated." People talk about their jobs 40 years, they made a point of taking the phone off the hook. Now, everyone's demanding to be connected and is surprised they feel "frazzled -- just keeping up". This is 'Emperor's new clothes' syndrome: Everyone proving how important they are, and corporations, at least, are loving it.
At least I dont get constant giphy memes via email (Score:2)
At least email cuts down on that sort of thing, and I am not compelled to reply immediately..
I guess Swedish workers are lucky (Score:2)
It's called work. (Score:2)