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programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
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How often do you check your email per day?
Does checking your email make you more productive or less productive?
Oh, sure, we delude ourselves into thinking we're being extra-productive by obsessively checking and responding to our email, but in reality we're attending too frequently to our own desire for gratification and sabotaging our own productivity in the process.
As Dan Ariely explains in a postscript to Predictably Irrational, he smells a rat, and so should you:
Skinner distinguished between fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement and variable-ratio schedules of reinforcement. Under a fixed schedule, a rat received a reward of food after it pressed the lever a fixed number of times -- say 100 times. Under the variable schedule, the rat earned a food pellet after it pressed the lever a random number of times. Sometimes it would receive the food pellet after pressing 10 times, and sometimes after pressing 200 times.Under the variable schedule of reinforcement, the arrival of the reward is unpredictable. On the face of it, one might expect that the fixed schedules of reinforcement would be more motivating and rewarding because the rat can learn to predict the outcome of his work. Instead, Skinner found that the variable schedules were actually more motivating. The most telling result was that when the rewards ceased, the rats who were under the fixed schedule stopped working almost immediately, but those under the variable schedules kept working for a very long time.
If this reminds you of gambling, that's because gambling explicitly works under the very same schedule of variable reinforcement.
Go ahead, pull the "new email' lever. Take a chance. Most of the time you'll end up a loser, the proud recipient of yet another spam email, a press release you don't care about, or some irrelevant conversation someone has cc:ed you into. But not always. There are those rare few times when you'll hit the jackpot: you'll get an important bit of information you needed, or tentative contact from a long lost friend or associate, or other good news.
We're so ecstatic to get that single useful email out of hundreds that we can't keep ourselves from compulsively pressing the new email lever over and over and over, hoping it will happen again soon, like the caged rats in Skinners' experiments.
We desperately need to ask ourselves, and those around us, to revisit the purpose of email. Given what we know about the importance of flow to productive work, and how multi-tasking is largely a myth, is it worth the constant stream of minor interruptions?
We've overloaded email with so many meanings that it has imploded as a communication medium. Need an urgent answer to your question within a few minutes? Fire off a quick email and demand a response! Want to have a long back and forth discussion with several people? Email everyone! Do you have a new theory that you desperately want to explain to someone? Send it to them via email! Got a funny joke or picture you're dying to share? Email it to the office alias!
When we treat email as the kitchen sink of communication, appropriate for everything, it simply ceases to work at all.
Kathy Sierra was concerned that Twitter had the same variable reinforcement problem, but I think Twitter is in fact part of the answer to the problem.
Instead of abusing email as a "one size fits all" conduit for communication, be smart. Know when to escalate your communication to the right medium for the particular message you're trying to deliver:
The real solution here is to move people beyond email silos wherever and whenever possible. Some amount of email is still inevitable, though. What steps can we take to turn our email from a dangerous variable reinforcement machine to something more … sane? Predictable, even?
Before you send that next email -- or press the "retrieve mail" button again -- ask yourself: do I smell a rat?
Meh. It must be "cool" to trash on email these days, as this is a sentiment I've heard repeated in numerous places.
Email is a tool. If you use it well and if it's suited to solving your problems, congratulations. But like any tool if it's making your task more difficult, it's time to get a new tool. These one-size-fits-all "beware email" articles simply peddle fad-following sham advice suitable for the horoscope page of your local newspaper.
CynicalTyler on September 28, 2009 2:25 AMI check my inbox when I get a notification that I have new email. :}
matt on September 28, 2009 2:31 AMThere is almost no difference between pushing a button to check for new mail or clicking on every notification message.
You're out of your current train of thoughts and need several minutes to recover from the disruption.
And yes, i'm clicking on every outlook notification because i'm curious.
Switching off the notification really makes sense.
There might be some important mails (e.g. from my boss), so i'll set up a new rule in my mail client to play a sound for these senders.
Yawn.
Charles on September 28, 2009 3:45 AMI would prefer to funnel most of my communication through email. I then have 1 inbox to check, instead of many. Google Voice is based on the concept of one inbox.
dxb on September 28, 2009 3:48 AM@Sebastian Dadal
"You can *never* fully focus on a task if you know that a new email might arrive any second."
So how do you focus knowing that the phone might ring any second, or someone might call round any second to ask a question? With email you can always turn off email when you absolutely need no interruptions, but you can't ignore the phone or personal visits.
People are different, and company's are different, but all I can say is I'm honestly far less distracted by emails (which I can quickly glance at and decide how important it is), than by constant phone calls (including having to answer for anyone out of the office), and by conversations.
Phenwoods on September 28, 2009 4:11 AMI cannot understand your point. If I get automatic notification on my taskbar saying I have new email and I am able to see beginning of the message, I am not under the pressure of constantly clicking "Check new email". The notifier does that automatically for me.
Emails are also great for communication since I don't have to reply the moment I'm asked a question (compared to phone call) and I can check all messages that I sent and received in past months.
Moreover, it can be encrypted and signed which makes email equivalent to a signed document.
Where is that rat?
Bonuses use this variable reinforcement. Programmers deal with logic, don't they? Yet they don't seem to think or behave logically when it comes to bonus systems, emails or many other aspects of daily life.
Well, doctors smoke and drink, even when they deal with people suffering from the consequences of such activities.
The blind watcher maker is still working away.
Sam on September 28, 2009 5:11 AMI also tend to disagree. I think e-mail is largely a blessing. You just have to be a little bit disciplined. If you're not, then offloading part of your communication to other places on the internet will probably just increase the problem, because now you have to check multiple sources.
The really nice thing about e-mail is that you don't have to respond instantly. You don't have to find a time at which you and your correspondent are both available. Instead you can both use times that are convenient for you. If you have something that requires immediate attention, by all means, use the phone! E-mail isn't very reliable in that case anyway.
Of course e-mail is not the be-all-end-all of communication. There are other means that are better suited in different situations. However, they all require your attention and they will all break your working flow if you don't have the discipline (or option) to not constantly (try to) engage in this communication.
Jordi on September 28, 2009 5:14 AMWhere were you? ;)
On emails, that is true considering big enterprises which employees actually receive hundreds of emails - or, non-company addresses which are subject to spam. But, in small companies with internal addresses on internal servers and therefore reasonably shielded from spam, and/or clients (can you say gmail?) with good spam filters, email can be a very valuable instrument of productivity. On the other hand, if you _don't_ check your email often yuo _can_ miss urgent information/things to do. Ok, there's always the phone, but imagine having a coworker (in another office) who's absolutely unable to convey a concept in spoken words without straying 100 miles west of the subject... then written email is your salvation :)
Ale on September 28, 2009 5:18 AMIf you still press your "receive email" button you need to update your software.
I rarely send emails. They are to easily misinterpreted, especially in a discussion.
Herman on September 28, 2009 5:20 AMNow you have all the problems of email, but scattered in different places.
Bernard on September 28, 2009 5:22 AMI'm going to mail a link to this article to everyone in my team.
Jef Claes on September 28, 2009 5:28 AM[Shameless but relevant plug]
Hi,
This is exactly part of the problem we are trying to solve at Inbox2. Email applications have not seen any innovation at all in the last 20 years (except maybe for GMail who stirred things up a little bit). We are trying to change that.
The first step that we have taken is to create an activity stream around all your incoming email data. This allows you to filter our specific "persons" (regardless of which email account/social network they are sending you messages from).
The second step which we are working on now is to be able to priorotize "persons" during specific time periods "co-workers are more important during office-hours but a whole lot less important after office hours".
The third step (but this will take a while though) we will be moving towards is adding intelligence in your email app, but I won't talk to much about this just yet :-)
There are plugins and methodologies that allow you to add this to for instance Outlook/Gmail, etc. The only problem is, these are aftertoughts. Inbox2 builds these concepts in from the scratch (its a whole new email platform).
Check it out if you think it sounds interesting www.inbox2.com
- Waseem
Waseem Sadiq on September 28, 2009 5:32 AMWelcome back. But I cannot see the problem with email.
I don't spend my time continously checking for new emails, I have notification do that for me - yet your suggesting turning that off. I find twitter far more of a distraction, yet you recommend this as part of the answer. (If twitter is an answer, it must have been a stupid question.) You talk about the importance of maintaing work flow, and avoiding multitasking, yet advocate making phone calls requiring immediate attention.
It seems to me that email is the ideal solution to most of these problems, in that it allows you to control, when and what you respond to, as is appropriate to your current circumstances.
And the rat experiment doesn't really apply, as even if you check your email at fixed intervals, you won't receive a fixed reward. It's still just as much of a gamble.
Phenwoods on September 28, 2009 5:40 AMGreat stuff, man. This is SO important if one want to be more productive.
Here's what more you can do with email to be more productive:
- don't check your email first thing in the morning
- turn off email notifications
- setup email rules
- shut off your email for a couple of hours
- keep emails simple and to the point
Your first points call to mind MMOs as well.
Josh S on September 28, 2009 5:49 AMIn general I agree with Jeff, but a strong counter-argument is searchability. I keep all important emails for later reference. If a conversation happened on a forum, then it's comparatively invisible to later searching.
It's just self-control really, isn't it? You could swap 'checking email' for 'surfing bbc news' or 'checking facebook quick' or 'making another cuppa'.... there's lots of ways to procrastinate.
Dave on September 28, 2009 5:52 AMSo you are saying that you have not posted in 2 weeks because you have been checking email obsessively?
I think I may prefer the rat to some coworkers; any idea where I can get one trained?
Bill Clinton on September 28, 2009 5:59 AMI disagree. I'd much rather send/receive email. That way I have a written record of what was said and can review that record. This is very important when I'm given a task to perform. My boss may ask me to make a black widget. After several days of building the widget I may not remember whether to paint it blue or black (my boss may not remember either). Then I can review that email and know to paint it black. Then when the boss says, "No, I told you to paint it green", I can point to the email and defend myself. This can save me a lot of time and arguement.
Plus, our culture has demanded that we answer the phone when it rings. This interrupts my chain of thought significantly. Even if I choose to ignore the phone, the ringing still interrupts my thought process. I'm a programmer. Perhaps I have just loaded a complicated algorithm in my brain and am trying to sort it out. Incoming email won't bother me. The phone...
I tend to disagree with your post too. Well, in essence you are right and we should stop sending email in cases where it is not the best medium. Still, I agree with most of the others that the alternatives you define (phone calls, twitter, forums, etc) are not better at all. They are more fragmented, and unlike email, there's a chance nobody ever sees it.
Email is not the problem, workforce trends are. A few things are going on. Where we used to have location-specific departments in the same room, we now have colleagues across the globe. We outsource things which opens yet more information and communication channels. Information size is exploding and we are expected to multi-task like crazy. Our networks grow from a few local guys to hundreds of people from all over. We work across timezones.
I could go on, but I think it is clear that the amount of email you get is not because of email. It is because of the amount of communication channels and the size of your network.
Finally, you are also ignoring the fact that email is used as much more than just a communication medium. It is also used as a planning system, a document management system, a discussion forum, a legal repository (to put things in writing), etc, etc.
"Email is dead" posts I have seen for years already. This is just another one. The reality is that email is still increasing. Twitter will not fix it, nor Google Wave, because they cannot fix the problem. The problem is not the tool, it is the inevitable growth of our networks and therefore our communication channels.
Ferdy on September 28, 2009 6:03 AMI agree with the other folks here. I actually make a point to tell my staff (I'm in IT), NOT to call me. I don't pick up the phone and check my VM only once a day. If anything, the concepts here apply to VoiceMail more than email. I mean, talk about a productivity waster!
Pick up the phone, dial the VM. Wait for attendee. Dial password. Listen to new message count. Press 1. Wait for whoever it is to say hello, and work up the nerve to ask me whatever it is they need. And deal with their ridiculously thick accent most of the time. And then I have to take notes!! That's an interruption.
And I don't check email, it notifies me. And I have a record of everything that was requested. It's like letting the requester take the notes for me!
Not to mention it's non-intrusive. I don't have to worry about whether the person is busy, or in a meeting, or even in the office (Thanks to Blackberries). They can be alerted to my question and answer at their earliest convenience. No worrying about scheduling face-time.
In fact, when I *DO* get verbal requests, I always instruct the person to "write me an email", so I can check back and the end of the day and see if I have forgotten anything.
I think there are things in the office environment that are much bigger time wasters than checking email.
Personally, I would like a cappachino IV and catheter.
D-Chap on September 28, 2009 6:17 AM@Phenwoods: I am not denying the fact that phones or personal visits are distracting. In fact, you should probably turn off or mute your phone, shut the door etc. when you have something important to work on.
Nothing is going to happen if you do.
You might think checking email only takes seconds; but remember that even if you stop working just for half a minute to read that new email, you will need at least 15 minutes to get into the "flow" again, which means that every email/notification you read might cost you a lot more time than you realize.
Now I want to say that what I write here mostly applies to creative work. Maybe what you do doesn't require getting into the flow; but from my experience as a designer, having prolonged periods of time with NO distractions whatsoever is the only way to produce anything of value.
Sebastian Dadał on September 28, 2009 6:20 AMJeff is making several points here, actually. First, the biggest problem is checking your email constantly, as if it's going to deliver a present at any moment. Instead, it just interrupts your "flow" and your ability to get real work done. I suffer from this and thanks to Jeff for the reminder that I need to cure myself.
Second, email really isn't a great medium for some work. Face to face conversation is a lost art. People often resort to sending a five page email that the recipient won't read rather than have an actual conversation in person or on the phone (yeah, I know this can be difficult between time zones, but how many times do you IM or email the guy in the next cubicle with something important? Too many.) Then the recipient will ignore your monster email precisely because it's so long and complicated. Sometimes it's better to have the conversation and follow it up with an email so there's a record of the decision that was made. On top of that, you never know what you'll find out when you actually talk to someone - new product plans, layoffs coming, new hires, etc., plus the commeraderie that it builds. Email is overused and abused. It's not bad and it's the right answer sometimes, but it's the default, and not always appropriate.
Wandercoder on September 28, 2009 6:25 AMI see your point(s), but email actually makes me *more* productive. Its biggest benefit, as mentioned here above, is that it's asynchronous. It does not interrupt me nearly as much as a phone call or a meeting or the random colleage wandering over to my cube.
Anonymous on September 28, 2009 6:27 AMEmail, IMs, Facebook, BLOGS, RSS Readers, Twitter, MEETINGS, MySpace.... and the like = MASSIVE TIME SINKS and are not in any way productive.
Mike on September 28, 2009 6:32 AMHey Now Jeff,
Stop Sending Emails, thx 4 the info!
Coding Horror fan,
Catto
Catto on September 28, 2009 6:32 AMThese blog posts get more and more pointless as the weeks go on...
unkown on September 28, 2009 6:33 AMAnother thing about face-to-face meetings. People love to gather in the conference room to stroke the ego of themselves and each other by yapping away, but how often do you leave a meeting with nothing to show for it?
Most times I meet with people there are only a few people taking notes, and that usually stops about 5 minutes in. Personally, I don't even bother bringing a pad with me anymore. I'd rather listen than jot.
And yet, when the meeting is over, I remember all being in agreement about... something. But don't really know what my gameplan is or what the actionable items were. I usually have to send post-meeting emails, to verify that I came away from the meeting with the right info.
So if I have to ask via email what to do, what actual good was the meeting in the first place?
D-Chap on September 28, 2009 6:40 AMI always leave the gmail tab open in my browser the whole day so I am not exactly hitting 'check for new mail' often. But I do agree email occupies major portion of a pie chart that shows causes of information overload. Gmail took a major step forward towards organizing email and email management - that of grouping related conversations by subject and providing a single email store called 'archive' that could do 'catch-all' that you wouldnt have to worry about.
Until additional approaches to overcoming the flood of incoming email are tried, we wont know if they would work or not. Some of the thinks I can think of (in the context of gmail or other web based email app) are as follows. In my idea, there are no folders or labels concept, you only have one thing to look at in your visual radar - the ubiquitous inbox. But there can be multiple views of viewing the inbox by using selective filters.
- Priority emails - If you get purchase notifications from your website via email (paypal payment notifications, server down notifications from your website monitoring service, emails from your business partner, etc.), you want to attend to them first so there needs to be a way to make them appear at the top of the inbox (using some filter criteria). Uptill now the only parameter of how email filters operate is by sending incoming email into folders or labeling them but that requires one extra step of navigating into that folder and contributes to visual clutter because you have a growing number of folders that immediately appear in your visual field and you start feeling overwhelmed. Setting up labels for filtering them into different folders spreads the areas to be viewed and clicked into multiple levels of action that requires human effort expense.
- Sticky emails (bookmarked emails) - Emails that you can mark as 'needing further action' need to have a way so that they always appear at the top of the inbox.
- Multi-level tree-structured labels/folders with drilldown but you dont have to set up the labels first - the email program should set this up automatically. Gmail only allows you a top level classification in the form of labels. The tree would be built by different columns of the email database which you can choose.
By Sender->expanding tree->Click Sender->Inbox view only shows all correspondence to/from sender. You could do this with 'from:' search inside gmail. Or instead of occupying a visual area created by a tree structure, there can be a better option thought out.
By Filed Tags that you assign to emails->So you could group unrelated conversations into threads if you assign the same tag to multiple email threads. In gmail, conversation threading can happen only if the subject matches. But lets say you want to assign tags to emails so you could group #webdesign related emails in one bunch even if the word 'web design' doesnt appear anywhere in the email - #webdesign is a user associated tag - any fast to recall, easy to remember tag would do. This way this is different from a standard 'search filter' that filters email by search phrase 'web design'.
Able to edit emails for brevity and save them - people send lot of trailing ">"s that are simply regurgitations of existing, previous emails, there need to be a way to wiki-ize and remove repetitions, add pertinent infos and save the structure as it appears modified. (but it wont be compatible with existing mail protocols like smtp/pop3 etc). May be there needs to be a self-editable private wiki which you can build like a chronological log of correspondences on a particular subject etc by copy pasting email text and deleting the redundant text and adding any information you find meaningful. Then you could delete the emails you no longer need because you've copied the data you want to keep for perpetual record in the form of a wiki (or other note taking app). In short email data needs to be moved out of the inbox into a more manageable, queryable at high speed form, and then the corresponding emails deleted from the inbox. This contributes to the 'clean slate' 'fresh start' feeling (called zero inbox personal productivity method). With a blank mind, you can be more productive rather than with a cluttered mind just as if the mind copies what it sees and visualizes it - a cluttered overloaded inbox = a cluttered overloaded already occupied brain that cant accept anything more.
- Calendar-based email navigation or some other method that only shows a subset of emails and other emails are hidden from the current view. Much like in Google's Web History view. If you click a date on a calendar then only correspondences on that date will be displayed. This way you can always keep up with a 'cut off date' of emails that you ahve attended to. 'All emails up to and including 03-29-09 I have gone through and attended and there is no further action required on them' - > then those can be moved to the wiki-type email archive and removed the inbox once and for all.
Mohan Arun L on September 28, 2009 6:44 AMI advise everyone to view Randy Pausch Lecture: Time Management at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0
And also, if you like it Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
We ( developers ) loose productivity on their rampage to check and check email, even if it's only notifications. You break away from you mindset and it takes time getting back there.
Regards,
JFerreira on September 28, 2009 6:54 AMcool story, bro
Anonymous on September 28, 2009 6:55 AMI think Jeff's not talking about *receiving* email as the reward. He's talking about receiving *juicy* email that's the reward. So yeah, I'll see a badge on my mail app's icon when I have new mail, but do I have my mail app set to check frequently, and am I constantly glancing down at that badge, and when I do have new mail, do I feel compelled to look at it right away, and when I do look at it, am I hoping for certain kinds of "fun" messages?
A similar example would be constantly checking Facebook. Or, say, constantly reloading a blog page hoping someone responded to my comment.
Andy Lee on September 28, 2009 6:56 AMP.S. I never had any interest in those apps that check mail for you -- the idea seemed silly -- but if I can see at a glance the *subject* lines of recently arrived emails without going into my mail app, this might serve as a kind of methadone or nicotine patch for email addiction.
Andy Lee on September 28, 2009 7:00 AMSo...what does it mean if I obsessively check CodingHorror to see it there's a new blog post.
"Cheese, please...cheese, please...cheese, please......OH YEAH! MORE CODINGHORROR CHEESE!!!!"
kmerkle on September 28, 2009 7:01 AM@wandercoder
"...the biggest problem is checking your email constantly, as if it's going to deliver a present at any moment."
So why not turn on notification?
"On top of that, you never know what you'll find out when you actually talk to someone - new product plans, layoffs coming, new hires, etc., plus the commeraderie that it builds."
Face to face has its place, but I think the above shows why it can be more of a loss to prouductivity than email. A question that could have been answered in a couple of minutes, ends up as a whole morning's gossip. Killing productivity for everyone in hearing range.
Another advantage of email over face to face, is that it's possible to cc everyone who needs to be involved in the conversation. Without email it's too easy to miss an important decision just because you were out of the office when a conversation too place.
Phenwoods on September 28, 2009 7:01 AMDid anybody else notice that all the people that defended emails wrote long replies?
Word of Mouth Mike on September 28, 2009 7:03 AMI think that your day to day job defines how you deal with e-mail.
Some people are working heads down on a coding a new feature or fixing a tough problem. For them e-mail is a distraction. (Jeff you appear to be in this boat.)
Other people are in the problem triage area. They are getting messages from various streams and need to sort it all out to keep the team moving forward. Some people might call this the manager of a team but there are also other team members that are in this mode, think about handling issues with support and installation (yea, someone has to do this work.)
For those that are in the problem triage area e-mails is really useful. It provides a searchable record of what is going on and who is involved. Phone calls and meetings are too ephemeral for a some communication.
I'm still trying to see how Twitter is useful for all this. Some people keep a separate monitor dedicated to a twitter client. How is that not distracting? Also you can't use twitter for internal communication about general company business. Jeff, you have it good here, Stack overflow is generally quite public in concept, you can't do that with most companies.
John on September 28, 2009 7:05 AMIf you applied the same rationale to speech or telephone use as you do to email, your argument would sound absurd. Why should it be valid for email? It's just a medium.
Dinah on September 28, 2009 7:08 AMI have Gmail (and Google Talk).
I get notifications, from none to a few, in the course of a day.
I NEED to reply to those emails to get my job done.
I disagree with your suggestion!
Andrei on September 28, 2009 7:09 AMAh that wonderful destroyer of rational thought, the email treadmill. I found that I had two email systems open at all times on my desktop, GMail for personal and then Outlook for work. I would compulsively check each many many times an hour, to the detriment on my main gig, which did not include obsessively checking email in it's job description. I finally handled this by closing all e mail programs and only launching them three or four times a day. Usually after my boss called me asking the stupidest of all corporate questions "Did you get my e mail?". Well if you pressed the send button, I can almost guarantee you that I did indeed receive it. Or my in-box did at least, even my pitiful IT department could do email properly. I usually found the the contents of the email were non life-threatening and usually pretty trivial. But he had to have that instant response there by affirming his managerial chops. Of course this entire exchange totally derailed whatever thought process I was currently entertaining so it wasted an hour or so until I could get back into that zone where code would just flow off my fingers like water off a ducks back, if I could ever get back there at all. Then my job devolved into simply checking my working programs, which took 5 minutes out of my day. Took me years to get to the point where my programming skills did my eight hours of work, leaving me for more important things, like Desk Top Tower Defense, and the occasional bug fix. The I went back to obsessively checking my email again, mainly because I was bored out of my freaking mind.
Craig on September 28, 2009 7:10 AMHmm, sounds pretty similar to your other favorite tools twitter and stackoverflow. Really you aught to be careful what you point out, when your whole (stackoverflow) business model is based on variable rewards (up votes, badges, it's all pretty exiting, will I get one today?)
Speaking of stackoverflow, I totally miss up-voting responses. Even Scott Adams has a voting system on his comments.
What, no oranges?
Peter on September 28, 2009 7:21 AMMy problem is how to not spend all day on e-mail. I get more actionable e-mail than I can respond to in a 9 hour day.
Hillbilly on September 28, 2009 7:30 AMThe issue I have with this is, in our office, if we DON'T check our email every 5-10 minutes, we are told that we "aren't keeping on top of things." Makes it hard considering I have to break my concentration each time. Otherwise, I agree with your post.
Shawn on September 28, 2009 7:35 AMThe question about email is which is to be the master: you or the email system. If you feel like you have to check and respond all the time, it's the master, and you're not going to get much work done. If you are the master, then you check when is convenient to you, when you're between stretches of concentration, and then you get all the communication since you last checked.
Use it wisely and it's a very good tool, but you can also use it as a major distraction.
David on September 28, 2009 7:36 AMI agree with empi that there some important advantages to email that you skipped over (such as the audit trail aspect).
I was also suprised you didn't take the opportunity to plug Stackoverflow when listing appropriate communication channels :-)
You also make some good points. The question is, does Google Wave suffer from all of the same issues?
Phil on September 28, 2009 7:50 AMHow is Twitter going to solve this problem??? It's even more text.
doekman on September 28, 2009 7:50 AMYou know, some email clients use this wonderful invention called "slide notifications."
Outlook and Thunderbird being two that I can think of that do this.
It shows you the sender and subject line of an email, then fades out after a few seconds.
Therefore, you can glance at it, see it's not important, and continue working.
Or if it is important, make a mental note that when you're finished with whatever you're currently working on to look at it.
R. Bemrose on September 28, 2009 7:55 AM"Email problem" is in fact "Information overload problem".
The solution is not to switch to different mediums, but to learn to treat emails more efficiently:
1) Learn to recognize spam and useless emails early.
Setup spam filters.
Teach people who email you to send you only useful emails.
The great way to teach it is NOT to reply to useless emails.
2) Learn when to reply to email and when not to reply.
Even if you reply -- be brief and to the point.
3) If possible -- put only one actionable request into one email.
I check my person e-mail once a day. Everything goes directly to junk, except for mail from people I know, or from news letters I subscribe (though the news letters go into specific folders and are read when I have time). My work e-mail address is only used for work, I do not give it out to anyone that is not directly related to my job, and I receive no spam or otherwise generally un-useful information. Perhaps it isn't e-mail that is broken. Perhaps, you just do not use it correctly. I do not spend an inordinate amount of time sifting through garbage because all the garbage goes to my junk folder, which I empty weekly. Get yourself a personal e-mail address and share it only with friends and family. Use that address for standard communications. Use your work e-mail for work and get a public address that you can sift through occasionally. Learn to separate your e-mail, compartmentalize and e-mail works!
molex333 on September 28, 2009 8:06 AMThe whole internet is like that. There might be something important somewhere, hiding, eluding. But when you find it, profits!
Silvercode on September 28, 2009 8:07 AMI could not agree less. Sure my spam email account gets a ton of crap. My business email account gets only business emails. Email used correctly provides a perfect trail. It is not a bother or a nuisance. It is the preferred method of contact for almost every client I have and definitely mine.
I think the problem is more Twitter than email. Twitter addicts are the ones constantly cheeking to see if anyone cares that you had scrambled for breakfast. Reminds me of smokers, got to have that next fix. Have yet to see a tweet worth reading ever.
Yes Jeff I am talking to you. I listen to the podcast and you slide in a twitter comment all too often.
Brian on September 28, 2009 8:38 AMI agree with Jeff. Actually I'm a little bit surprised that some guys here don't think email becomes a problem nowadays. Maybe they don't receive a lot of emails everyday, or maybe they have special hacks to handle emails efficiently, or maybe their daily job is checking email, making decision and sending email...
My experience is that emails, especially in large enterprises, are distracting, especially when your job is not handling emails. Also sometimes email is not the effective way of communication. That's why we need to consider other ways of communication and be cautious when writing emails.
I agree with Jeff. Actually I'm a little bit surprised that some guys here don't think email becomes a problem nowadays. Maybe they don't receive a lot of emails everyday, or maybe they have special hacks to handle emails efficiently, or maybe their daily job is checking email, making decision and sending email...
My experience is that emails, especially in large enterprises, are distracting, especially when your job is not handling emails. Also sometimes email is not the effective way of communication. That's why we need to consider other ways of communication and be cautious when writing emails.
Refreshing Stackoverflow every few seconds has nothing to do with this, right?
Marius Gundersen on September 28, 2009 8:44 AMI use email because I can use it without a web browser, and web apps suck.
Nicolas on September 28, 2009 8:53 AMPart of the back-and-forth argument here is that there are (at least) two kinds of people when it comes to what constitutes an "interruption".
For myself, oral (and aural) communication constitutes an entirely different mindset than written. When I'm heads-down programming (so I'm typing code into one window), I can fairly easily pop up another window, type in that one, and get right back to programming. Picking up the phone to make a call (or worse yet responding to someone walking into my cube) forces me to switch gears. Getting back to the code now takes much longer -- I have to retrace my steps and re-create the chain of thought.
My boss, on the other hand, hates reading. Oral communication is always less intrusive to him than reading and responding to email. He had to teach me the evils of over-emailing. I'm much better now, but it's always going to be my first gut reaction to email (and ask to be emailed).
What I've learned to do is a) consider the source (and target) of my communication and b) balance the personal convenience RIGHT NOW of firing off an email with the total amount of time gained from walking away from my cube and having a quick face-to-face to get all the info I need at once.
Kevin on September 28, 2009 9:07 AMThe advice in this article makes good sense when applied to someone who is a popular blogger, a creative professional, or some other form of self-employed independent contractor who has the luxury of choosing what to work on and when.
Sadly, though, it's just not very realistic for the rest of us who have to work a regular 9 to 5 gig and have no choice but to respond on a schedule that someone else sets. For most, that's a much bigger obstacle to overcome than any mountain of email.
Tim Lara on September 28, 2009 9:43 AMWe waited 18 days for this?
Nom on September 28, 2009 9:45 AMI have to disagree with this article. I think it might be because I use instant messaging, phone conversations, text messages, and e-mail all for different purposes so maybe I am not experiencing this problem. I get mail pushed to my mobile devices, and I don't constantly check it. I actually used to be more obsessive about checking my mail back when I had to open a mail client on my phone or use the browser on the device to check (circa 2007). I guess I differentiate between slow mediums such as e-mail and phone rather than instant mediums such as texting and messaging.
Because of this, I cannot agree with this article at all from my own perspective, but I do know what you mean in a corporate prespective. I've many times gotten 100 e-mails about something. Instead of having an IM system setup to handle that or a program that just pops up in the bottom right annoying you with these requests or making beeping noises, most people just forward all of that to e-mail. You're extremely right on about how people multipurpose e-mail. The problem is that e-mail isn't design for most of these purposes and is probably the worst method of accomplishing these methods. Worse yet, most companies pile everything into one account rather than many so all 100 e-mails are for 100 different programs and tasks that have no relation to one another.
Saturn2888 on September 28, 2009 9:48 AMI would also be interested to see a post explaining how Twitter solves the information overload problem. Other than the fact that it sort of absolves some of the guilt of not replying -- the ephemeral nature of the Twitter feed seems to make it a little more plausible to use the excuse that you "missed" something -- I don't really see much difference compared to email. And a fairly major downside of the ephemeral nature of Twitter is that it's difficult for people to know whether someone has already asked a given question 10 times.
Tim Lara on September 28, 2009 10:00 AMUnfortunately, most bosses believe that all of their questions require "an urgent, immediate answer"
Matthew on September 28, 2009 10:17 AMI wholeheartedly agree with this!
I always have my iPhone on vibrate. Just a week or two ago, I went into my notification settings and turned Email notification off. I check my iPhone enough anyhow, it doubles as my watch, and when I respond to texts and phone calls. Now when my phone vibrates, I know it's because someone is trying to get ahold of me directly.
My life has actually been quite a bit happier with email notification turned off.
Trevor on September 28, 2009 10:52 AMI can;t believe no one has already pointed out that Jeff, being a somewhat internets celebrity is probably deluged by more email that most of us. Jeff apparently can;t figure out that his situation (either compulsion to check updates) or the fact that he gets more correspondence than others, doesn't necessarily translate to the entire world, or even all other developers.
Oh well. In general it is good advice to keep reviewing your daily habits and practices to cut out waste. Blindly following some "guru's" advice on the internets is not the best way to do this.
What works for Jeff probably won;t work for you and what works for you doesn't work for Jeff...
tim on September 28, 2009 11:04 AMGreat article! I just forwarded it to all my friends :)
Mithun Jacob on September 28, 2009 11:06 AME-mail can become a hindrance, if you can't control yourself. It really is just another medium for communication, it's not like you can't get carried away by not wanting to get off of the phone either. The real problem is priorities and keep them in balance.
So I do think time management might have been a more valuable aspect to look at, instead of just saying e-mail is bad.
Daquan Wright on September 28, 2009 11:13 AMThere are several issues here.
1. Distraction
Compulsive email checking and real-time notifications are distracting for many. And hopefully it's socially acceptable within your workplace and/or among your friends to curb such distractions.
It should be reasonable to expect email to function asynchronously. Simply, none of us should expect a reply the same day. And certainly not within moments. Unfortunately, many disagree.
2. Email as a Medium
Email has many failures:
- Privacy
- Authentication
- Urgency
- Collaboration (backlog of ">>>>" and ridiculous subject prefixes "RE: FWD: Re: RE: Fwd:")
- Versioning
- Archive/Organization
SPAM, phshing, and inbox clutter are all symptoms of the failures above.
Needed improvements:
- asymmetric encryption
- reliable priority/importance flags
- formal conversation/discusstion entities
- attachments should probably be disallowed outright in favor of FTP hosting
- shared, editable labeling/tagging
3. Etiquite
Email isn't going away anytime soon. What can we all do today?
Email (especially in the workplace) should be crafted with as much care as is given to printed communication.
- use meaningful subjects
- make the purpose obvious
- usually request only one action per email
- emphasize the action requested
- keep it short and simple
- check spelling
- proofread
Just about zero of my coworkers agree agree with any of this. :(
4. Alternatives
Does anything exist on the market right now or in the near future that will help?
GMail labels, conversation grouping, and archive features are all good patches on top of the broken system.
Various encryption solutions exist, but they're uncommon and far from standardized.
We can escalate/deescalate or otherwise transfer communication to a different, hopefully more appropriate medium:
- Telephone
- Voice Mail
- Instant Message
- SMS
- Wiki
- Blog
- Bulletin Board
- Discussion Group
- Social Network
- Media Sharing Site
- Collaborative Editor
- Bug Tracker
These each have their pros and cons.
The big problem: It's difficult to organize different types of information within a single system. Within multiple, it's a nightmare.
That said, the Google Wave demo video is quite impressive. Whether it ultimately works as advertised, it is still movement in the right direction.
Zack on September 28, 2009 11:22 AM"I see your point(s), but email actually makes me *more* productive. Its biggest benefit, as mentioned here above, is that it's asynchronous. It does not interrupt me nearly as much as a phone call or a meeting or the random colleage wandering over to my cube."
Exactly. On a day when I get a dozen email requests for help, I am still generally very productive throughout the day. On a day when people stop by to ask questions two or three times in the day, my day is completely ruined.
Yes, there's a point where our email skills fail us and one face-to-face meeting works better than a dozen emails (note: getting ten people on a conference call is almost NEVER better than an email chain or Wiki page for communication, but face-to-face communications can exceed written words). But, IMHO, those are both far between and trainable. Exercise your written communication muscles and maybe you'll see some improvement!
I want my email provider to send me a Tweet when email arrives...
Steve on September 28, 2009 11:32 AMWhat spam? I have almost never received spam on my office email address. (Except for the occasional Dominos discount mailer. But I dont mind that).
But if you are in the habit of tossing around your email address at all possible occasion you get then you are in trouble. And I must say gmail does an excellent job at filtering spam from my personal email. So no spam there either.
So its safe to say that all the mail I get on my official email account was mail that was supposed to come to me. But then there is always the endless 10 page droning about some mind numbing trivial issue at work which people insist on solving by sending emails only.
I am usually CC'd on most such emails.
Solution: Select All > Right click > Mark as read.
Bobby on September 28, 2009 11:39 AMIt scares me to think that you propose 10 different ways to deal with situations (Ie. Kudos, send it to a notice board, etc).
Email is still the defacto standard when it comes to communicating with most interfaces, I would worry that any other could fall through the cracks.
Until a better method comes out I'm sticking with email. We do need to get rid of spam mail though...
Mark on September 28, 2009 11:50 AMI received this link on my Gmail WebClip
Caracas on September 28, 2009 12:20 PMI agree with the recommendations for dealing with incoming mail, but not for replacing it with other forms of communication. As far as distractions go, email is far less of one than phone (requires immediate response), face to face (requires immediate response, sometimes ending up at someone else's desk), IM (annoying flashing windows for such messages as "lol") and meeting (large chunk of time taken up trying to stay awake while listening to other people discuss topics of no interest to you). It is no worse and quite possibly better than using a public forum, which will have no better notification method than your email system and as others have mentioned, can result in the same addictive refreshing that you blame on emails. Also, using email as the primary communication tool, even if it's not the optimal medium for most forms, means that only one place needs to be checked for messages and a search for old communication (which I have to do regularly because that's how long it takes to get things done in public service) needs to only be performed in the one place.
SL on September 28, 2009 12:23 PMI think the article is spot on: e-mail is the ultimate productivity killer.
I have no idea how any of you e-mail lovers manage to do any *real* work done while being constantly notified about new stuff in your inbox. It's certainly not possible if you are a designer, a programmer, or any other creative professional.
Checking e-mail periodically throughout the day, which Jeff recommends — even as often as once an hour — allows you to have periods of distraction-free time, which can be used for creative work. You can *never* fully focus on a task if you know that a new email might arrive any second.
Regarding the "Stop sending email" part: I wouldn't say it is realistic to think that all the people, who just mastered using e-mail a couple of years ago, will suddenly start utilizing tools like blogs or Twitter accounts; but this is going to happen once everybody learns that it's easier to create a Facebook event for a party than Cc 30 people from their address book.
Jeff, this is a great article and you are clearly ahead of the game; keep creating.
Sebastian Dadał on September 28, 2009 12:31 PMI can't understand the logic here... maybe the point was misrepresented but it sounds like you propose using (and as a result, checking) 10 different mediums instead 1 to save time and increase productivity?
Here's a better idea:
1. Don't use twitter, don't use facebook, don't use myspace - save that for your own time.
2. Don't sign up for all kinds of crap online, you won't get so much spam.
3. Install a proper spam filter.
4. Do your job.
I think the differentiating factor here to note is that you're writing largely for software developers, but you're not one - at least not only one. You are a 'public figure', you market your software/websites via things like facebook/twitter/blogs. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most developers don't do those things, and the argument doesn't really apply.
Case in point: I get maybe 20 e-mails/day. About 15 of which are fogbugz auto-mails about things that do need to be looked at/prioritized. The rest don't even get a second glance past the outlook system tray popup until my break.
Steve-O on September 28, 2009 12:35 PMMy Outlook has its own monitor so I can see my inbox all the time - and can decide if the mail in it is important enough to action.
I can effectively check my email without any more effort than sweeping my gaze to the right.
Martin on September 28, 2009 12:51 PMI put "checking for email" in the same category as "looking at my email to see what came in". Of course I have new mail; I'm not dead and the internet connection is working. I don't need some stupid red badge on the dock icon or a noise or worst of all a jumping visual alert.
The point here is that unless my actual work is fielding every message the moment it comes in - an online receptionist or help desk role - I should be able to ignore email for at least one & maybe two of my focused, productive chunks of time. Those time lengths vary by job - shorter for project managers (some but not all of the time), longer for programmers - but healthy company cultures expect heads down, flow time without trivial interruptions.
If there's something of higher priority AND urgency than what someone is accomplishing in their current focused chunk, then that interruption should come by phone, in person, or - if company culture has agreed that IM is a near-immediate interruption - by IM. (IM does have the distinct advantage over the phone of allowing you to finish the thought you were on or make a note of it before you respond).
The benefits of not allowing email to be defined as an interruption are huge.
Dinah on September 28, 2009 1:20 PMYay! Catto's back.
David Dawkins on September 28, 2009 1:37 PMEmail's great... it's a fairly standard, centralised place to receive all your notifications and communications.
Install an auto-checking mail notifier, and you no longer need to faff around clicking on "check mail". The computer tells you when there is some.
To become more productive, you need to syphon everything into email. Get email notification of your Facebook profile, Twitter direct messages, blog replies, etc.
That way you get *told* when there is some new information, rather than having to pull the much much worse one-arm-bandit lever of "are my Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/forums/blog replies containing new information yet?". And get an RSS reader so that it takes mere seconds to work out if there's new content on your favourite blogs.
Habitually clicking on "Gmail" every ten minutes is one thing, but it's not as bad as constantly cycling through ten websites and social networking sites in the hope of new pointless drivel to read.
It's easy to "defend" against the constant onslaught of pointless email and updates that aren't important. The world is good at sorting mail, it's done it for decades.
James on September 28, 2009 1:38 PMI have Thunderbird set to check for email every hour and all I get then is a non-obtrusive toast notification. That's never a distraction, as apposed to having to start the browser, get on the email account web interface, log in and finally check if there is any email - rinse and repeat.
That's the way too many people work with email - waste so much time on even having the activity called 'checking email'. I agree with Nicolas - web apps suck. Especially in this matter.
reminds me of inbox zero
http://inboxzero.com/inboxzero/
It is a quite predictable result of the test on mices.
In nature food, resources and dangers does not follow a fixed pattern distribution it time and territory, but they rather follows complex, at first random-looking patterns.
The better is the animal in exploiting the pattern to gather more energy and avoid dangers, the better odds has it to survive and pass its genes.
So a fixed pattern reward does not trigger any bells in our instinctive part of mind, while a random pattern reward challenges the irrational part of us to exploit it as in nature, even if the rational part well knows it is true random, not just complex and random-looking.
If you're not on my contact list, your email goes to the Junk folder. A quick scan once or twice a day with a single click and it all goes away. When I feel a phone or personal conversation is more appropriate (depending on the nature of the email or how many there were), I call/setup a meeting. Not too difficult.
Is this the Coding Horror Public Awareness channel?
Are you becoming a life coach?
What's next? Vilifying coffee & cigarettes?
Your Mom on September 29, 2009 3:16 AMAlthough we are all rat but i tend to agree on this with Jeff and i remember this is what we have been taught back in university days while studying Effective Business Communication or later in Project Management methodologies.
I am not sure i still remember the uni's subject title but somehow it resembles with this "Seven Pillars of Unified Communications"
(http://unifiedcommunicationsblog.globalknowledge.com/2009/07/22/seven-pillars-of-uc/)
I like the comparison to the rat hitting the button to get a reward. I think that actually describes how I interact with the task tray notification - when I see that new mail has arrived I feel compelled to check what it is, even though it is usually some system generated email about a build process or service desk ticket that I don't care about.
I think tomorrow I will turn off my task tray notifications and try fixed schedule email checking... I'll let you all know how it goes...
Karsten on September 29, 2009 5:30 AM@Sebastian Dadał
“In fact, you should probably turn off or mute your phone, shut the door etc. when you have something important to work on.”
As I said, circumstances vary. It’s good that you have a room with a door to yourself, and that nobody’s going to complain if you ignore phone calls. Others have to work in open plan offices, where you are expected to not only pick up your phone, but those of anyone else not at their desk. You cannot ignore a phone call like you can an email. And, it only takes one person in the office to get involved in a lengthy phone call to distract everyone.
By contrast, emails are silent, only distract those involved, and can usually be put on hold until a suitable time.
“even if you stop working just for half a minute to read that new email, you will need at least 15 minutes to get into the "flow" again”
Again, people vary, but I don’t find that a quick glimpse of an email header has ever caused me 15 minutes to get back into the flow. This is very different to having to answer a question on the phone.
If you manually enter to your inbox every time to see if you got email, you are doing it wrong.
Email should be available at all times, minimized in your desktop and let it alert you when you receive something, just like you let your phone ring when you get a text or call, or like you set up an RSS feed to tell you if your favorite blog has been updated.
Making a manual request to a service to see if there is something new, it's just a waste of time. Let it work automatically and you'll be productive.
The problem comes when you try to use email for what it has not been designed, eg. Controlling the feedback from your customers, receiving tasks from your bosses, delivering tasks to your employees, etc.
There are specific tools for those tasks and if you use email chances are you will lose control and end up in a mess.
Cristian on September 29, 2009 8:06 AMFor months I've kept coming back expecting something interesting to read, but it's been nothing but meta blogging, trolling and making the most stupid assertions. According to Jeff, all the code I write sucks and if I'm not celebrating that it's all going to be web programming one day, I should find another profession.
Now in a self-referential, ironic (and amusing) twist, I've come to the conclusion that:
THIS BLOG IS A VARIABLE REINFORCEMENT MACHINE
I will no longer be pressing this button hoping for cheese.
I urge my fellow Coding Horror addicts: STOP. READING. CODING HORROR.
Do something else, anything... Eventually even rats stop pressing the button. How long will it take you?
I would say that the comments were more helpful/important than the article itself. All I do to fix the problem is set my mail program to check e-mail every half an hour when I'm working on something that requires a lot of concentration. And even then, I ignore the notification most of the time until I'm done doing what I'm doing, or I'm interrupted by someone. Maybe it's because I don't get a lot of e-mail, even less of which is actually important.
But then there was this comment:
"We do need to get rid of spam mail though..."
We can do our best to filter, track, and firewall spammers, but the day we get rid of spam will be the day we can trust to hold the entire Stanley Cup Playoffs in hell.
Ernie on September 29, 2009 10:35 AMun-subscribe from what you never seem to find time to read anyway
scott on September 29, 2009 11:59 AMI must admit, this did kinda seem like an arb post.
Daniel Carvalho on September 29, 2009 12:40 PM@J: I would, but sometimes I get bored at work, so I come here to see what stupidity is being espoused this time.
R. Bemrose on September 29, 2009 12:49 PMSet up your email to get rid of all the trash posts your company sends out. (No one ever reads them). Most of the time a few filters will make it pretty simple. Then setup a mail client that shows you a few of the lines of the email message when it does arrive. You can quickly check to see if it's worth answering without lifting a finger.
Now answering your emails except at certain points of the day will guarantee that something you have to respond to will be missed.
David W. on September 29, 2009 1:06 PM@Phenwoods
"If twitter is an answer, it must have been a stupid question."
This is the funniest (and truest) thing I've ready all day. I love it!
Matthew Morgan on September 29, 2009 1:23 PMI send an email maybe twice a month. But I check my email more times a day than I can count. Of course, "check my email" translates to switching to the Gmail tab, glancing for spatial changes, then going back to what I was doing. I don't really think there's much harm done. And no, I don't Twitter instead of emailing either. Although I did go on a binge of sarcastic Facebook status updates for a couple weeks once.
Trevor on September 29, 2009 1:44 PM"Why no updates for like a month? sorry, just curious. i think everyone is."
Isn't it obvious? He's been conduction an experiment to see how long we'll keep pressing that lever without a reward.
And god said: Let email be pushed, not pulled.
offler on September 30, 2009 2:10 AMVarious comments indicates one thing,
Lot of posters have valid points, usages and benefits of having email. Valid points.
So do every communication media (Such as phone, twitter etc). Everything was created for human need and their success indicates that.
The point Jeff is trying to bring out is getting "addicted" in these communication media and lossing focus on "actual work".
Here the "actual work" represents "design, architecting, researching, programming, debugging etc.". (Serious work focused attention)
This post may not be applicable for a Sales, Marketing folks, Clerical, BPO guys etc. For them missing out a mail, sms, alert simply many not be acceptable.
Murthy on September 30, 2009 2:43 AMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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