I hate email, it’s now official as I’ve written it on my blog. It stops me working on new releases and new products and drains nearly all my energy away.
I’m know I’m not the first person to say this and I’m definitely not going to be the last. The final straw for me was reading this good article on the New York Times web site ‘I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip’ that made me realize that I had to do something to stop letting my inbox rule my life and demoralize me! The problem is I would always start doing emails first thing in the morning, and once they were finished 3 hours later I wouldn’t be in the mood for doing anything productive. I’ve read many people say you shouldn’t do your emails first thing but I have tried that and it just doesn’t work for me. So here’s what I’m doing to try and get away from my inbox:
1, Stop sending emails – I use to think instant messenger was the big disrupter but it’s a lot easier to stay logged out of this if you really need to get stuff done. It’s perfect as well for asking quick questions that have a one or two word answer – keeping these away from my inbox is a great start.
2, As well as using MSN/Skype for chat, if what I need to ask is more that two lines of text or I know will come back as a longer answer I’ll call them. Speaking to people is great and I can’t remember why I stopped doing it! (oh yeah – emails!). You can easily wrap up a complex question/problem in 5 minutes of voice conversation that could take many many emails.
I’ve taken to trying to talk to customers as well to solve support issues. Previously with Lightning Tools it was all done by email but calling customers has two benefits
- as above complex problems can be easily solved saving the need for 10-20 emails backwards and forwards
- customers are very impressed that you call them. It’s a great way to get their honest feedback on your stuff and also new ideas for future work.
I upgrade my iPhone to firmware 2.0 at the weekend and iPhone exchange integration comes as a mixed blessing to me! It all works very nicely but having emails available on the go is something I don’t really want. If it’s that important ring me!
I know many people have auto responders going out saying something like “I am stopping using email. If it’s important call me on *****”, but I’m not sure if a potential customer got that back from me they’d be too impressed.
In the article in the NY Times Luis Suarez says he makes a lot of use of other social networking tools such as twitter, blogs etc. While I’m using twitter it’s a good way to let an immediate group of friends know what I’m up to, but I don’t know how it can help with customer support emails. Blogging and documentation can hopefully cut down further on this also – I’ve got a number of great plans for this for Lightning Tools!
So who else hates emails? And what are you doing to break away from it?
I’ve been thinking about things to build on top of SharePoint/Exchange/Outlook to help the email pain but haven’t come up with anything yet