I’ve noticed that web workers tend to be particular about their communication tools. Twitter is usually for mass sharing, wikis or collab apps are for project discussions, while email is for almost everything else.
We all have our own preferences when it comes to communicating with others. I prefer email for general communication, instant messaging for answering quick questions, and my land line for long, personal conversations.
But not all people understand this - especially if they aren’t web workers. In fact, before I had a system in place, I felt like a doctor who was on call 24 hours a day. The good news is that there are some things we can do to get people to reach us through the channels we prefer.
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It seems there are a lot of people bringing back the familiar cry that “Email is dead” … mostly pointing to the rise of social networks and IM among the younger generation (see also: is email dead?). Many of those who are joyfully proclaiming the death of email (and again, this is not a new proclamation) are those whose email inboxes are full of thousands of messages. I can see why some would prefer the death of email and the rise of other modes of communication such as IM, social networks, texting, etc. — in many cases email is extraneous and overburdening.
The useful emails are great, but how do you deal with all the rest?
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“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. … As if the main object were to talk fast, not sensibly.” - Henry David Thoreau
This comment from Thoreau’s Walden was made more than a century and a half ago, talking about telegraph communication … and yet 160 years later, with the rise of a million means of instant communication, it’s just as appropriate.
Just because we have instant communication doesn’t mean we should do it. Sometimes it makes more sense to talk less, to deliberate, and to communicate more important ideas.
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