
There Is No Such Thing As Email Overload - stangeek
http://www.stangeek.com/there-is-no-such-thing-as-email-overload
======
tomjen3
>or you are in the process of doing something so important that it requires
100% of your attention (this never happens for more than 10 minutes),

Never worked at something, then realized that 3 hours had gone by? Never
happens? Then you are bad at whatever it is you do.

Anyway if it is so important to get your answer within 10 minutes, you should
have the cutesy to show up in person and discuss the matter. Email isn't meant
to be instant.

Sending an email is a request for the recipients time and frankly you have no
right to expect people to give you what it is you request just because you
request it.

What an unnecessarily arrogant blogpost.

~~~
billybob
"Email isn't meant to be instant."

Exactly. If something isn't urgent, send an email. If it's somewhat time-
sensitive, send an instant message. If it's super urgent, go talk in person.
And please have the courtesy to know which is which.

Whenever you expect an immediate response, you're saying "this is more
important that whatever you're doing." Saying that when it's not true shows
that you don't respect that person's time.

~~~
stangeek
You are right about email not being the correct medium for instant response,
and the 10 minutes SLA I mention in the blog post is provocative. But as much
as I respect other people's time, I've had enough of people pretending to be
doing something so clever / urgent / important that they can't allocate a few
minutes here and then to read their emails. If you don't want to be
accountable for answering correspondance you're being sent, then don't
communicate your email address.

------
yannickmahe
My issue with reading emails as tehy come in is that it breaks my flow when
I'm developing.

As Jeff Atwod stated here : [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/the-
multi-tasking-m...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/the-multi-
tasking-myth.html)

There is no such thing as multitasking, so the average 1 min to read a mail is
actually much more of a loss in terms of productivity, and more importantly
comfort in doing what you do.

~~~
stangeek
Hi, I fully agree there is no such thing as multi tasking.

My workflow is purely linear! I'm just saying that if, in general, you're not
able to split big problems into smaller ones, which are manageable in 10
minutes spans, then you should probably rethink the problem again.

------
tintin
_"doing something so important that it requires 100% of your attention (this
never happens for more than 10 minutes)"_

The author is clearly not a developer.

I like to check my e-mail twice a day. And then just close the program. Keeps
you focused (more than 10 minutes).

~~~
stangeek
Hi all,

Interesting remarks. I am a developer. Probably a bad one from reading your
comments. My point of view is that every problem, however complex it is, can
be split into more simple problems which need no more than 10 minutes of
attention at a time (when I say attention it's really 100% of your brain - no
chatting, no twitter etc.).

I develop in rails with cucumber for use case designing. So for instance my
workflow would be: \- write a cucumber test (if you spend more than 10 minutes
on a single test, it's clearly too complicated or not granular enough) \-
check emails (if any), answer (I'm amazed at someone here saying he needs 1h+
to answer a single email. Sure this can happen, but less than 1% of the time.)
\- watch the cucumber test fail and write the corresponding feature (again if
more than 10 minutes, then you clearly don't know how this works) \- check
emails (if any), answer \- write ruby on rails code to make the test's step
work \- rince & repeat

I have to add I'm not just a developer - I'm a startup founder. So I'm doing
more than developing. And checking my emails only twice a day would mean I'd
miss many opportunities...

~~~
tintin
_"Probably a bad one from reading your comments."_ Well if it works for you,
don't change. I will be the last one to call you a bad developer. But in my
experience e-mails can be very distractive because people ask for a solution,
not just a simple reply.

 _"checking my emails only twice a day would mean I'd miss many
opportunities"_ I'm hearing this a lot, but it's it's a false assumption. Real
opportunities can wait 4 hours (do you also check your e-mail when you
sleep?). It's just that you think you will miss something.

------
billybob
"You can afford to spend 30 seconds every 10 minutes to deal with emails."

As others have mentioned, this would destroy programmer productivity and flow.

It seems the author is picturing a scenario where you can just read an email
and fire off an answer. In my case, an email may require an hour of research
or a day of work to answer. If I'm already working on something, just having
the new task mentally on my stack is going to distract me from my current task
and thus delay me getting to the new one. Or else I'll switch to the new one
and completely lose my place in the current one.

Infrequent email checking is much better for my productivity.

