Rising Email Immunity Leads to Conflict over Email Etiquette
In the afterword to The Tipping Point in paperback, Malcolm Gladwell predicts that people will become immune to email over time: “the more email we get, the shorter and more selective and more delayed our responses become. These are the symptoms of immunity.”
As some people become immune while others retain traditional expectations for email, we’re seeing conflict over exactly how email should be treated.
Is it okay to delay response or not to respond at all? Are short, to-the-point emails curt and cold, or are they okay in a time of crushing email volumes? Could you treat email like a river, similar to Twitter or chat streams, ignoring stuff from the past in favor of focusing on the present? Or is it critical to process email with some empty inbox scheme that focuses you on each individual message?
Brian “Krow” Aker says he’s become immune to email. He doesn’t respond to all of his email and when he does respond, he uses just one or two sentences. He thinks he’s not the only one:
I believe that immunity to email is growing. I see far fewer long pieces of email today. People I know who used to write small novels today write just paragraphs (thankfully!).
Email immunity is unevenly distributed — some people have become almost entirely immune while others still treat it as a privileged and prioritized channel. Plus, entire generations are less susceptible to email communications: many twentysomethings and teenagers prefer instant messaging and texting.
Facebook, instant messaging, Twitter, and other alternative tools trump email and make some people more immune to email than others. Early adopters of social tools are likely to be relatively more immune to email.
This uneven distribution of email immunity leads to conflict over how to handle email. People with little immunity to email react with indignation to suggestions that you might worry less about responding to email or leave your inbox full or prioritize brevity over niceties. At the same time, those with more immunity question lengthy email discussions, complex email processing schemes, and overly elaborate email etiquette guidelines.
Have you become immune to email?
You know, I often think this is a more general principal that we don’t actually need to maintain as many conversations as quickly as we think. I’m sure people got used to ignoring the telephone calls — maybe even smoke signals ;) — once they were too numerous. I know I tend to ignore people who come to my door selling crap as well as junk mail.
For example, I find myself ignoring IM, IRC, Twitter, and even RSS feeds quite often. And it’s not so much ignoring them as cutting out the crap and then consuming the 1-10% of good stuff in batches (usually late at night when insomnia hits). I think there’s some sort of “information flow” momentum you achieve and then you can sort of down-shift your engine and everything works out fine. Every now and then, you have to binge on your info inputs, but that lets you coast, so to speak, for awhile until you have to binge again. Or maybe that’s just me being lazy with my info input ;)
The 4 hour work week guy sort of drove that vague theory home for me: just try slowing down, consuming less, and see if the world really does blow up. It probably won’t: but be prepared to re-adjust if there is a (minor) explosion.
same here. one liners. no etiket.
And I leave everything in the inbox. Google Mail, tagging, conversation threading are great. Lotus Notes is gnarly and yahoo mail (the old one–the new stuff, blech!) is passable.
Writing succinctly yet effectively increases vocabulary. Bonus!
Anne, you’re talking Bacn. BTW are you like me with 6 email accounts? Most of them are spammed daily except for my coveted Mac.com address which I only share with trusted friends and workmates – but even it is getting spammed. But coming back to your story…the trouble with short emails is that they can be easily misinterpreted. “Yes” can sometimes mean “No”, if you know what I mean. And also with emails…if you’re getting hundreds of the things a day (or even thousands) it’s damn near impossible to keep up. For instance, when I email the Editors at YouTube I’m lucky if they get back to me in a week – the time it takes them to get to it.
I have at least six email accounts, but I only check two of them on a regular basis.
Yes, short emails can be misinterpreted, it’s true. Long ones may go unread, though. There’s no perfect solution.
I have realized that people have become to email and if I want to effectively recruit, I have to either make a phone call or talk to them face to face. Email is passive and it doesn’t demand a response nor is it an effective call to action.
I use email within a context. Quick replies or to send files or ask for appointments. Never do I use it for hard or difficult communication. Email doesn’t communicate emotion well and often email gets misunderstood or misconstrued.
I used to work at Yahoo at a reasonably senior level, and email immunity is part of the culture there – and I’m sure at most bigger Internet focused companies. You simply can’t be effective at your job and respond to every email you get. As long as expectations are symmetrical its not a problem – i.e. nobody takes it personally if they don’t get a reply email. I often tell people in initial meetings to keep trying me if they don’t hear back from me – almost like getting no answer in the days before voice mail.
I’m about 80% immune. I find that anyone not attached to my online presence (Twitter, Jaiku, flickr, Facebook) has a hard time getting a response from me. Among my friend group, email immunity is asymmetrical, otherwise, I’d be totally immune.
I had this discussion with my wife last week. She feels email should be personal and not the study in brevity that I use it as. I feel like it does me little good, so I treat it as such.
My main beef with email is the lack of context and threading of conversations. Gmail has changed the conversation threading and that is great. I like the context that Facebook walls and Twitter streams provide. This is also why I don’t have philosophical discussions over IM. :)
Oh yeah, I’m immune. The more email get the more immune I become. People need to realize that their email message may not be the most high priority thing I have to work on. Just because you emailed me doesn’t mean your request jumps to the top of my list.
I’m getting there. My personal gmail account mostly seems to be a haven of newsletters. I get darn little personal email from anybody. At work, things are getting ridiculous. People treat the “all-hands” list as their personal bullhorn to send out notifications for every cause they happen to find useful. I’ve setup extensive filters in Outlook to catch certain words and route them to a folder that I call “BS Filter”. I have email from certain people going straight to the trash because in three years on this job, I have NEVER gotten anything from them relevant to doing my job, yet every time an email from them comes in I have to stop what I’m doing to handle it.
What really kills me is when people we know get their first computer and internet access, they invariably get that stupid “Hi, I’m Bill Gates, and I’m testing an email tracking program. I’ll give you $1000 for every person you forward this to” email and have to forward it to EVERYBODY they know. Then I have to go to snopes, find the link, and find a way to gently let them know that this has been going around for more than a decade, there’s no way to track email, and you’re just being greedy and annoying without hurting their feelings.
Eric: for me too there are certain people who send so much email of little value that I’m almost entirely immune to messages from them. I haven’t taken to directing their mail into the trash (still thinking I might get something important) but I rarely open those messages and never respond.
Another good point made earlier was that difficulties arise in the asymmetry. As long as everyone has the same expectations — whether about responsiveness or anything else — it works fine. But when an immune person and a not-so-immune person interact, there can be problems.
Mmm.. I’m just as immune to e-mail as to radio or television. Only now you’re receivng lots of mini broadcasters. If it’s relevant I pick it up. If not I do not respond or if needed for the sake of politeness.
So not leave you inbox full. Inbox Zero is what its about. Just make sure you do not check your email too often. Check twice a day and empty that sucker out.
-Aaron
Yes to brevity: I still use sentences, though – I think it’s more professional).
No to ignoring: If I’m getting a message, I LOOK AT IT. Why? I don’t want the stress of missing something. Plus, I work hard to make sure that if it’s coming to me, it’s important. Other than spam, you should be able to control this. CC’s from colleagues? Ask them to stop. Cute puppy pictures from mom? Ditto.
Yes to emptying: Again, a stress issue – what’s there waiting to cause a problem? Also, letting crap pile up (paper too) is a slippery slop to the “pile, not file” trap.
Matthew, I’m the exact same way. I can’t stand having unlooked-at non-spam email. I may not deal with it right away, I may not even read it deep enough to process it right away. But I know it’s there and I know the gist of it. It’s easy to process to zero when you don’t have more than 10 pieces to deal with at one time. I archive everything, so if I’ve given something a cursory skim-and-file when I should have spent more time with it, I can get at it later.
I also have informed my friends/family that while I love to hear from them, I’m too busy for jokes and other garbage. With Facebook and other means of sharing stuff, that’s not as much of an issue for me anymore. I look at my Mom’s inbox when I help her with her email and it’s full of “Fwd:…” messages. I don’t have patience for it.
At work I respond promptly and communication between co-workers is generally fairly good. Anyone who doesn’t reply – esp. when customers are requesting one – is pretty much known as a poor communicator.
I’m very close to giving up personal email though. I get pretty easily overwhelmed by a full inbox and for interpersonal communication, it doesn’t work for me. I originally treated it as an electronic version of the letter, but its immediacy belies the fact that not everyone will respond to a letter the same way. E.g., if someone I haven’t heard from for a while contacts me (and they don’t live in the same city/province/country) and says they want to know how I’m doing, etc., but then never replies when I respond and ask how they are, etc., well, it feels rude and a waste of my time, regardless of whether it’s an email or a snail mail letter. I get that people are busy, but so am I and if I took the time to respond to a letter, then I kind of expect the person who initiated the contact to reply in kind. Even in brief. So at this point, if that happens with someone I know, I henceforth end contact or reply only very very briefly and don’t bother with the details.
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