E-mail Overload: Welcome Back to School

E-mail, arguably the most successful of all computer applications, has grown so rapidly that it' threatens to veer out-of-control for many people. Designed as a simple communications tool, it's now used for dozens of tasks, from personal archiving to community-building and marketing. E-mail is sparking, perhaps even overwhelming, the revolutionary new model of instantaneous communications. This is the first time in human history disparate people in diverse places can communicate with one another instantaneously. But are we ready? We know surprisingly little about the social and psychological impact of e-mail, beyond usage, volume and demographics. We do know few people have workable strategies for coping, a problem that hits college students and tech and office workers especially hard. Your experiences and solutions are, as always, welcome below.

There is a sense of feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the problems e-mail creates (also acute for people not in college, since the vast majority of Americans are still on dial-up systems). Employers get frustrated because workers spend so much time messaging one another with questions, problems and data sent merely because it's so easy. As we move towards an instantaneous model of communicating information, the pressure on everyone to manage information rises. Most people aren't getting much help.

It's simple to send instructions and directions via e-mail, but tougher to hold people accountable for messages delivered in ways they struggle to sort, absorb and file. It's easy enough -- and true enough -- to tell a boss or professor you didn't get the e-mail, don't remember it, or lost it in the crush. For example: "I get a ton of cover-your-ass e-mail from subordinates now," e-mailed Daniel, an account executive in Chicago. "People used to make decisions because I wasn't available, but now, why should they? My employees just e-mail me every little decision so they can't get into trouble and are rattled if I haven't answered them in five minutes. They are learning via e-mail not to think for themselves, not to be in positions where they can be held accountable. They just instantly message me. I'm personally already overwhelmed with e-mail from my superiors and customers, not to mention my wife and kids, and my fishing buddies have me on a dozen mailing lists about fishing I don't really need to be on."

Sandra Berman, a teaching assistant at an Ivy League school, says e-mail is a growing and problematic factor in her relationships with students. "I'm always getting messages minutes before papers are due telling me they won't be done, as if notifying me constitutes agreement. I get very complex questions about reports and papers phrased in questions and e-mails that are 25 words long. If you ask to meet somebody, they are amazed. When I e-mail people -- it's amazing, but kids don't set up appointments face-to-face much anymore -- they often tell me, 'oh, I didn't know about that deadline or schedule change.' And you know what? It happens to me all the time, so it could well be true. I can't really absorb the e-mail I get, and surely can't figure out how to sort and organize it, so something is getting lost."

The overload seems to be hitting offices and colleges particularly hard. The computer savvy have a fighting chance -- to some extent they can retaliate and cope with alternate accounts and IDs, and with filtering and sorting and blocking systems. But most students at most schools don't yet have the time, opportunity or skills. E-mail and IM systems are no longer optional; they're essential to registration, course work, communications and a social life.

Students complain with e-mail so ubiquitous, they spend hours e-mailing and IM-ing people who live two floors below or in the dorm next door. "I IM for a lunch date, to get pizza, to walk to class, to check on my friends and assignments," says Jane, a junior at the University of Chicago. "It sounds lazy, but it isn't, it's just easier." Jim Bagwell, a University of Michigan senior, says his friends become alarmed if he hasn't replied to their instant messages in a few minutes. "They think I'm in trouble, or having tech problems. Sometimes they get pissed off. They e-mail me and call me up to ask if I'm on or have gotten their messages. I'm answering messages as fast as I can, because I know people are waiting. I don't meet with professors anymore because they all are online now, and it's easier for them and me to talk through e-mail. I get so many e-mails they back up if I don't check them every few hours ... I'm becoming something of a slave to it. It's a grind. Over the summer, two friends and I went hiking in Canada. We couldn't believe what was waiting for us when we got back."

Bagwell said in some cases, friends were worried or offended that he hadn't replied in two weeks. He lost the chance to join some college groups because people assumed he wasn't interested, since he had taken so long to reply. "You ought to be able to go on a hike without freaking out everybody you know." There are no universally-shared notions of etiquette regarding e-mail, and, as a result, says Bagwell, he and his friends become somewhat compulsive about checking it. "Definitely, the stress level goes up when I'm not near a computer for a couple of hours. That can be hard on work and peace of mind.The consequences and expectation surrounding e-mail are deeper than people realize," he said. "I'm really think twice before going offline for two weeks again, especially when I get a real job. That makes me a POW."

As people get spammed and flamed, their inboxes clog with messages, partially- read documents, conversational threads and URL's. Important messages can get lost or overlooked -- in fact a growing number of messages are believed to be vanishing in the e-mail overload, ignored, forgotten or overlooked. Even for people with sophisticated sorting and organizing systems, managing an inbox has become increasingly complex. Unlike s-mail, there isn't the certain expectation that messages were sent or received.

"There are many levels on which e-mail affects communications," says Jay, a Stanford graduate assistant studying the social implications of E-mail Overload (he will finish his report next year, and we'll post it). "For one thing, people increasingly expect that people won't read or have the time to respond to e-mail. For another, we tend to rush our messages, since we are always afraid of falling behind. That leads to misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and just poor communicating. People format messages differently, so parts of messages are often missed or not seen at all. Others send multiple messages because they are e-mailing so impulsively they're always correcting or clarifying themselves. That's dangerous in personal relationships and business. There is now a frantic, hurried quality to e-mail communications that is getting worse by the year, as the number of people and businesses online grows."

Like Bagwell, people who use computing in their school, work or personal lives can find themselves inundated with messages if they're offline for even a few hours or days. It's not clear when conversations begin -- or when they should and do end. People who come online for the first time often express surprise at the brusque nature of many e-mail communications, since they don't yet know how cluttered their inboxes will become. E-mail has created a culture of such instant response that messagers expect instantaneous replies. Bosses expect employees to be online regularly, sometimes even in off-hours. E-mail alters the nature and content of communications. Letter-writing -- a nearly dead form of culture all by itself -- requires time to construct messages, while recipients have hours or days to consider their replies. Letter writers often put the same time and energy into writing that gamers or programmers put into their work and entertainment. Ordinary mail also makes advertising and marketing material easy to distinguish from personal communications; junk mail is easy to spot and toss. Now, spam often comes disguised as personal e-mail, with individualistic headings, an approach I consider close to fraud.

E-mail is responsible for the growth of distributed organizations, obviously, and it permits people to communicate easily and cheaply across geographical and time differences. But we know little about how people organize and manage the large amounts of information so many receive.

Look for more on this topic in an upcoming column.

Telephone?

> This is the first time in human history
> disparate people in diverse places can
> communicate with one another instantaneously.

So I guess I imagined my mother calling her Swedish uncles when I was a kid, eh?

Re:Telephone?

You know what's even funnier? The telephone is more immediate. With e-mail, I usually have to wait twelve to twenty-four hours minimum before I get a response to my questions.

The Katz doth love his technology too much, methinks. He's genuinely convinced himself that there was no technology worth using before personal computers.

Re:Telephone?

There is a big difference between Telephone and E-mail. Telephone (specially for long distance calls)had a relatively high transaction cost associated with each phone call which relegated it for special ocations or important issues. What is the first thing that comes to mind if you receive a phone call at 2 AM? E-mail on the other hand does not have that associated transaction cost. You do not see or feel the cost of sending and e-mail. Sending an e-mail becomes as natural as speaking because it is so effortless you can take it for granted. That is the difference

4000 unread emails

At the large company where I used to work, one of my friends had just gotten hired on and happened to notice that I had 4000 unread messages in my inbox. He couldn't believe his eyes. Now, he's been there over a year and he's pushing 2000 on a regular basis. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that this is a sick way to live.

How do you get 4000 unread messages you ask? Well, you only have so much time, so you skim through your mail reading the most obvioulsy important and "saving the rest for later". Repeat for many months, and viola, you can't look at your email without feeling a sense of guilt and dread. Then, once a year or so I would hold my breath, select all and delete. Aaaah.

But I've broken the cycle. Now I get all of my mail thanks to my Crackberry pager. I'm pretty sure that is even a sicker lifestyle, but what can you do? :/

Out of Office reply

This comment, from one of the people quoted in the article:
I'm really think twice before going offline for two weeks again, especially when I get a real job....
is absolutely ludicrous! Use Out of Office reply for gawds sake.

People have to start taking responsibility for their own actions and life ... it's not all a bed of roses. Desk telephones were just as anoying before e-mail became as widespread, and in some ways e-mail is easier to manage because you can ignore the crap. Until you pick up a ringing phone you do not (generally) know what the subject matter is, and if it has a higher priority than your current task.

I do think however, that it would be nice in a mail client to know whether a message was:
Sent directly to you, CC'd, or as part of a mass-mail before actually reading it. Outlook can't do it, so that's me stuffed ;-)

Disclaimer: I know it can be set up using Rules, I just can't be bothered.

Mailing Lists

As I see it, mailing lists are a big problem. They are trying to do something that is handled much better elsewhere: USENET. It makes much more sense to use something designed for mass distribution and discussion.

Granted, USENET has its share of problems. It's hard to create groups/run a server and the S/N ration can get very low. Perhaps a slightly tweaked version is needed.

Moderation helps but places a large burden on the moderator. Mailing lists (at least the ones I subscribe to) don't seem to have a SPAM problem nearly as large as on USENET. Perhaps because it's easy to set up a mailing list that requires registration to post. Why doesn't USENET have anything like that?

It's a complete waste of resources to have everyone in a domain store separate copies of discussion messages when one USENET archive could be available to all.

What's the trick? Why do most software projects (for example) use mailing lists rather than USENET? How can we take back USENET?

Donald Knuths's Way...

...is not reading email anymore. Read it at Knuth versus Email [stanford.edu].

'I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.'
--- Umberto Eco, quoted in the New Yorker

Only JonKatz could rant this long about email

I don't really understand what this article is about. Yes people use email, its quite useful. We have some examples of people on University campuses who don't use it wisely ... big deal.

The example of the proffesor who gets emails just before papers are due saying they aren't going to be done: So what? Can this professor not stand up in front of her class and tell her students that practice is not acceptable and will be met with a failing grade?

Blaming email for the above problems is like blaming knives and guns for killing people rather than the people who kill people. Blame this on human laziness/impatience/ignorance/stupidity but not on email. Email is a tool.

As far as people not being ready for instantanious communication... well we've been doing some form of it since smoke signals were invented, or for that matter language. I really don't see what distance has to do with it and I'm not going to give up all form of communication anytime soon.

Email realtime

Indeed. As CTO of a company that employs about 100 people I clearly see a division between:

a) the "old guys". They consider email a mail equivalent: you check it once a day and ask your secretary to reply. They see 'too much mail' as 'way too much noise'. These are CFO-types and older sales manager types.

b) The "e-kids". They are younger (typically 35) and consider email a bonus, and see it as akin to the telephone. I.e. it has become a real-time mechanism. They have developed mechanisms to handle the deluge, such as the following (which I am trying to get everyone to buy into)

- Filter into separate directories upon receipt
- Check each minute instead of once an hour (or worse)
- Show the TO line in the list view of received emails
- Live with the fact that sometimes you cannot answer each one immediately, or ever
- Use various email addresses to separate business from private
- Use email aliases and groups were they benefit the project
- concentrate on the half that needs doing quickly: spend 10-20% of your time on that. Spend remaining 80-90% of your time on strategy. Typically, half or more of the emails need not be answered at all.
- Keep received and sent email for three months, no longer (for legal reasons too btw).
- Use ASCII, not HTML

I send a weekly newsletter that always has a few tips, and often sit down with older or less sophisticated managers individually to teach them some of the tricks. That helps a lot, I find.

Michael

not only at schools...

in the corperate world it's worse...

3-20 meg Power point prenentations, Mpeg video files, 3-4 meg spreadsheets, and 5-10 meg doc files..... for what? conveying information? noo, the info is only 10% of the file size, the rest is bloat and eye-candy. Your power point presentation doesnt need a WAV of turbo-lover to be effective, your spreadsheet don't need a 3 meg bmp in the background as a watermark to make it work, and your letter didn't need a 3 meg Photo of your head resized to 1X3 inches on your letterhead.

Everyone whines about mp3's and warez are soaking up email bandwidth, it's the lusers and sales people jamming it up with useless drivel disguized as important communication... the file attachment was the #1 worst thing to have ever added to email.

Let go

Probably the most important thing I've realized with the "advances" - instant messaging, phone mail, email, relay - is the ability to just say no.

Yes, it sounds trite. But next time the phone rings (cell or otherwise) during your personal time - don't answer it. I make it a point not to answer my cell phone while I'm at lunch, or in the restroom. If it's really important, they'll leave a message or call back.

It's something that actually takes some effort, because all of these devices were formed to say "Notice me! Pay attention to me!" But there is a time and a place for all things (Moderation in Everything is almost becoming my mantra).

If people can not handle this - then perhaps they need to learn to let go too.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Take 1 day a week off

I have to say that one of the nicest things for me is that I observe the Jewish Sabbath, and from Friday Sundown to Saturday Sundown I don't touch my computer or phone or TV. I totaly forget my email. I don't worry about my bills or anything else. There is nothing so important in my email that it can't wait until sunday.

Thankfuly the biggest list I'm on is mostly of people who observe the Sabbath, so it goes to about 0 for that day anyhow.

But try it sometime, take a day off from the modern world, its nice. And it gives you a nice chance to have a conversation face to face.

What the....

hell? I don't get it, am I the only one here who doesn't have problems managing their email? I maintain two seperate accounts, one at work and one at home. My employer doesn't have my home email address, and the work account never gets used for anything personal, or even checked outside of 8-5 Mon-Fri. On both accounts I use procmail + pine to keep everything sorted and undercontrol. Lists get pre-sorted into their folders by procmail, and most spam gets caught by Postfix via RBL's (at home at least where I run the server, my employer is currently listed as an open-relay on orbz but that's a different story...) and what little spam that does get through is pretty obvisous and get sent to spamcop right quick. With all the filters in place only direct messages to me hit my inbox, and email stays at a managable level, lists get read only when I have the time to spare.

Now I have no such filters on my snailmail so things get all muddled and tend to pile up. I have s huge stack of magazines, mixed with bills (thank $DIETY that I pay everything but rent electronically!), paper spam and the odd once a month actual letter. I get credit card offers disguised as bills or personal letters or checks, I get magazine offers disguised as all sorts of prizes and contests, some require more than a second glance to sort from the legit email. And for some reason my postman refuses to honor the procmial recipe I taped to the inside of my mailbox ;-> I'd love to have a different box for magazines, for bills, for personal mail and a spam filter. Yes I know I can write to the bastards at the direct marketing assoc and get off their mailing lists but that's far more effort than blocking 'net spam is.

For me the S/N ratio is far worse for snailmail than it is for email because I have less control and less options to automate the sorting process. Plus replying costs money, and takes far more effort than hitting ctrl-x in Pine. Now I realize I have it lucky being a geek, I have finer grained control that most "normal" people do, but it doesn't take much effort for even a normal college student type of open up a couple of different free accounts to help sort things, and any of the free POP3 clients allow you to auto-sort mail with almost the same level of control you get with procmail, it just requires you to sit down for an hour or two and do it once, and save yourself hundreds of hours down the road in wasted time.

The solution is so clear it is painful.

All we all need is Microsoft to introduce a new email variant where the sending party is charged for each email sent, hence diminishing the wish of users to impose unnecessary noise.

Email: best practices

I to was once at a loss when it came to handling email. I didn't know what to do with the tool.

Since then I have discovered that email is a wonderful tool for getting in trouble while drunk. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of ways to get in trouble operating a computer while drunk. I currently have a Compaq Proliant 6500 sitting in my bedroom due to a drunken visit to ebay. But email is much more effective. In my time, I've managed to let a heavily armed coworker [muppetlabs.com] know that I wished to knot and couple like frogs in a cistern. This, of course got me fired. I also managed to challenge ESR to a duel and notify our beloved Malda [cmdrtaco.net] that his girlfriend is a beast.

After enough of these episodes, I've come to realize that this is the real purpose of email. To let you say those things you only say while drunk to anyone at any time.

Truly a marvelous invention Mr. Katz, I wonder that you did not touch on this aspect.

Your friend,
--Shoeboy

Drivel

We know surprisingly little about the social and psychological impact of e-mail, beyond usage, volume and demographics.

Since when does "usage, volume and demographics" fall under "social and psychological impact"?

And how is it "surprisingly little"? Compared to what? How much we know about the psychological impact of postal letters?

Why does Katz always sound like he's trying for a Unit 5 Investigation during sweeps week?

Re: JonKatz

This is the first time in human history disparate people in diverse places can communicate with one another instantaneously.

JonKatz's Secretary: Mr. Katz you have a telephone call on line one.

JonKatz: Who is it?

JonKatz's Secretary: It's a Mr. Alexander Graham Bell ... he sounds a little upset.

JonKatz: Well what does he want?

JonKatz's Secretary: I dunno... he seems a little crazy... something about rolling over in a grave...

composing email can take a long time

One thing that I don't think a lot of people realize is how long composing a *good* email can take -- a lot longer than talking on the phone. If you call someone and explain something, they will indicate what parts they understand and what you need to explain more. So it winds up being efficient. Composing a good email is like doing a little presentation, you need to check it over and over to make sure you cover every possible angle. Then you will want to check the spelling, make sure your argument is well stated, and so on, because you only get one chance to get it right (of course, once you get it right, the mail can be forwarded around without the "Telephone" effect, the gradual entropization of ear-to-mouth communication).

The same applies to Slashdot posts also!

- adam

P.S. Wait a minute, that was a Jon Katz article that was topical, insightful, well-argued...what is going on here?!?!?

learn the difference

Personally, I have two primary email addresses: one for work, and one for personal stuff.

It amazes me that a lot of office workers don't consider this option. It's like only having a work-provided telephone, or a single mailing address where the letter from your aunt is mixed in with the latest HR newsletter.

When I leave the office on Friday, my work email stays there. There are escalation procedures if they need to contact me in a true emergency, but I don't respond to the minor problems. When I return to work, I check my email 2-3 times a day. If you respond to the inbox bell with pablovian conditioning, you won't get anything done. I read email, decide on the most important thing to do next, then do it. I don't check email until it's done or I'm at a good stopping point. Yes, there are the panicky nitwits who call if I don't respond in 5 minutes. It only takes a few rounds of "Is this really so important that it can't wait an hour?" followed by "I just read the message, and it CAN wait an hour. Click." before they get the point.

I treat personal email the same way. My friends know my phone number, and they know that I might not check or respond to email immediately. It confuses some of them, but they cope. They understand that I have two addresses, and if they send me something at 10:00am, I'm not going to read it until 6:00pm or whenever I'm not at work any more.

You just need to learn to break the cycle. I spend all day on the computer. I used to be a slave to my email. It was burning me out, so I stopped. The transition will piss a few people off, but in the end, you'll be happier and more productive if you don't check your email every few minutes.