I wrote yesterday that my enthusiasm for my retirement gig of the last few years — showing people how to deal with email overwhelm — has waned because nothing I teach my clients can fully overcome the root problem facing knowledge workers today: too much email. That problem is largely a function of how companies use email — as an ad-hoc, unstructured way of coordinating virtually all knowledge work.
Over the last 100 years, various innovators, from Henry Ford to W. Edwards Deming, have brought extraordinary efficiencies to the arena of manufacturing. Technologies and processes have been implemented that eliminate wasted time and effort.
But there is a conceit in white-collar industries that knowledge work isn’t amenable to process optimization, that it comprises only ad-hoc, extemporaneous activities that defy structure or routinization. So in the vast majority of companies, everyone who does knowledge work is left to collaborate with their colleagues via thousands of ad-hoc, free-form email messages.
It’s true that companies have implemented systems intended to replace some ad-hoc communications with more structured ones, and these efforts have reduced the back-and-forth of email messages for accomplishing routine work. But most of these systems don’t provide structure for the core knowledge work of the enterprise, only for the work of support departments like Finance, Purchasing and HR. And even in those cases there’s a trade-off. It’s the support organizations that sponsor the development of these systems, not the intended end-users. The result is that the systems are designed from the perspective of the support department and thus tend to streamline work for its staff at the expense of shifting work to end-users.
So the system for routinizing the purchasing process makes life easier not for the employee who needs a new office chair, but for the procurement department. The new T&E system allows the finance department to reduce headcount but requires other employees to spend more time preparing expense reports. There may be less email going back and forth, but only at the expense of employees having to deal with arcane and time-consuming IT systems.
But again, even when such systems are thoughtfully designed, they more often streamline non-core activities than they do the essential work of the knowledge enterprise. And thus employees are swamped with email, which increasingly threatens either their ability to do what they are paid to do, or their work-life balance, or both.
I look forward to reading an upcoming book by Cal Newport, “A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload.” It’s due out in March 2021. Newport is a thought-leader on how digital technologies increasingly encroach on the time knowledge workers need to do the kind of “deep work” that is the life-blood of the modern economy.
In any case, I hope companies succeed in recognizing and mitigating the problem of email overload. It’s not healthy to have people working all day and then, after getting the kids to bed, dealing with email late into the evening, not to mention on weekends. It’s exploitative and unsustainable. Companies that don’t address this issue will ultimately pay a price.
Hi Paul, I really enjoyed the three email overload posts. Of course it reminded me throughout of my own email overload these days. Any random twenty emails will consist of a couple of emails from friends, and the rest are from a vast assortment of Democratic appeals for $$ OR are ads. This avalanche seems to grow daily. Even on my Android phone, in the last month it seems, ads just jump in on top of what I’m looking at. Of every conceivable nature.
Also, the ones from friends can multiply also throughout the day, as when you start a conversation or begin to make plans. Away we go.
Of course we’re all mostly retired these days. So there’s no HR, Procurement, or Senior Mngmt types or colleagues bothering us. You’d think it would all be easier. But no. We are members of many groups large and small. We support many non-profits, who like to “reach out” to us constantly to remind us how wonderful their work is. Our book clubs have things to discuss; neighborhood organizations have things to share; art classes have stuff to print out and assemble. Not to mention all the arts organizations like the Princeton Festival or New York City Ballet who kindly put tons of concerts and programs out there digitally for us to enjoy. It’s all Too Much!
What I’m looking for is THE WAY to manage or deal with the sense of drowning, all these emails reaching out to me with outstretched arms, like needy, demanding children.
By the way, I’ve been meaning to read Bird by Bird forever. Got to put that on my list. Right now reading Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve. Marvelous.
I’ve found that the key to keeping my email inbox under control is ruthlessly unsubscribing from the mailing lists of even those well-meaning organizations that I support. There are certain groups to which I contribute every year, and I put reminders on my calendar to make those donations so that I’m not dependent on email reminders to remember to do so, then I unsubscribe. I’m OK continuing to hear from the groups that email me only every month or so, but the ones that feel at liberty to send me something every week need to be dropped. They’re like the middle school teachers who assign homework as if they’re the only one doing so, rather than recognizing that the poor kid is getting five or six other assignments in addition to theirs.
Most legitimate mailers honor unsubscribe requests, and for those that ignore them I set up a filter that grabs their emails and redirects them to the trash as soon as they arrive.
Life is too short!