
Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At - ingve
https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2016/04/email-isnt-the-problem.html
======
Puts
The reason nothing has replaced email yet, even tough it's an old and clonky
protocol is because it's an open standard and people don't make standards any
more. Today you make services (most often based on HTTP because it's a
protocol any 20yr old junior programmer can handle) that are locked in,
harvesting has much data about it's users as possible desperately hoping that
it could monetize on this data one day.

~~~
qznc
I believe the biggest reason for HTTP is that firewalls let it through.

------
stegosaurus
I actually wish e-mail were used more.

I want my relatives, my spouse, my friends to use e-mail.

I'm not quite sure how to convince them, though. It generally feels like
they'd rather use Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever's in fashion at the moment.

Any tips? Do I just have to sign up to all of the different chat apps and
write bots to forward them to me or something?

~~~
Sophistifunk
Delete your Facebook. There are a more benefits than being able to email;
you'll stop pretending to be friends with those kids from high school, don't
see your ex's new life, and you can get drunk with your friends without your
aunt knowing.

~~~
gammaflow
I would do this but sadly I was dumb enough to use it with OAuth in numerous
places

~~~
rpgmaker
Why is this a problem?

~~~
SyneRyder
It means deleting your Facebook account will also prevent you logging into
those other services. I had to delete a Spotify account and start over after I
initially signed up via a Facebook login.

(I should note that the Spotify staff were amazingly helpful and actually
migrated me over to an email-login account when asked.)

~~~
pmontra
That's because you used FB to register instead of creating your own account. I
suggest doing that in future, and use a password manager.

~~~
pjc50
At one point Spotify were _requiring_ users to link their accounts to
Facebook. [http://www.whathifi.com/news/spotify-no-longer-requires-
face...](http://www.whathifi.com/news/spotify-no-longer-requires-facebook-
account)

~~~
pmontra
Ouch. Big reason not to register.

------
cortesoft
I never mark email as read, nor do I move it out of my inbox. I have something
like 800k unread emails in my inbox.

However, I don't need to 'declare email bankruptcy' nor do I need to clear out
my inbox.. I just don't pay any attention to the read or unread status. My
inbox IS my archive.

My system is this:

When I check my email, I make sure I mark the most recent email as read. Then,
I look back until I find the next email marked as read. The emails between
those two are the ones that are unseen.

I do a quick glance at the emails in between. If they look important, I read
them. If they are important but I don't want to deal with it now, I 'star' it
in gmail. If it isn't important, I just don't do anything.

I don't quite get the need to have an empty inbox or to read every email.

~~~
rtpg
So the Inbox Zero (and Getting Things Done, which is basically the overlying
philosophy) is basically for people for which the status quo doesn't work. If
you're able to manage your data without an empty inbox, that's great!

But if you're "suffering" from your e-mail, Inbox Zero is great for a couple
reasons:

\- The rules are simple. Read it, then archive, reply immediately, or archive
it but put "reply to this email" in your todo list.

\- The success state is simple. Is your inbox non-empty? Empty it. Is it
empty? Go away.

\- It's about aggressive honesty. You won't reply to your aunt's email from 2
weeks ago. Replying with a one-sentence thing in 30 seconds is OK.

\- It fits with "email bankruptcy". Honesty and feeling of dread means you
should really just empty your inbox.

the core thing is that it removes decision-making from the process of checking
your email. For people who struggle with organisation, this is a bit of a
godsend. Sure, you still have to reply, but for a lot of people following the
Inbox Zero rules you'll end up feeling a lot less _totally useless_ stress
from staring at your inbox (even if it's just somewhere else).

It's sensible advice for people who don't have a working system. If you have a
working system, you should totally use that though, it probably works better
for you. Though maybe your system isn't working as well as you might hope, so
it's always good to experiment.

~~~
kungtotte
I feel like Inbox Zero is mostly for people that receive massive quantities of
email that they also have to _act_ on.

For people like me who mostly receive updates and notifications via email and
only occasionally receive actionable content through email it doesn't make
sense to have some sort of superset of methods on top of what my email
software already provides.

I read the stuff that's interesting to me, I pin things I need to take care of
later or remember (I use Inbox), I reply to things that need replying to which
typically only happens a handful of times per week, and that's that.

If I ever get to the point where I am pinning several emails per week and find
that I have to act or reply on more than the handful of emails per week that I
already do I will consider a method for staying on top of my inbox but until
then the built-in tools already do it well enough for me.

Also I would start by looking into the tools themselves to see how they could
help me, rather than inventing a set of rules for how to use my inbox.
Filtering, bundles in Inbox, etc.

But hey, to each their own. I would get stressed out with an Inbox Zero
mindset.

~~~
rtpg
That's a good point. If E-mail is your RSS, then this might not work for you.

Part of it is definitely feeding into an urge to be an e-mail completionist
(for me this has ended up with me unsubscribing from a _lot_ of email
notifications), so there is an argument that IZ feeding into the obsessive
parts of ourselves.

The whole "Getting Things Done" mindset is that you have to make a call on
everything, so you have to act on it. Like if you get a promo coupon, you need
to set some time to go browse the website if you're thinking of using it.
Nothing takes 0 seconds, right?

It's the sort of stuff to apply if you feel like your time is being sapped
away an you're not sure why. As one of those people, it's helped me a lot, so
I recommend it because I know others out there are like that... but no point
putting a Band-Aid where there's no problem right?

------
ryandrake
I'm one of those "zero inbox" people. To me, an E-mail sitting in my inbox is
a distraction-- a task I potentially have to do today. My system is pretty
simple: I skim through each one. If it looks like something I have to do or
respond to today, I give it a red flag. If it looks like something I have to
do or respond to tomorrow, I give it an orange flag. If it's a multi-person
thread wherein I'm waiting for more info from someone else, I flag it yellow.
Anything else gets no flag. For all of them, I archive them away after I've
read them to prevent them from becoming inbox-distractions.

Then at the end of the day, I'll review my red flags and do them, review my
orange flags and do the ones I can, and review my yellow flags and ping them
all to remind them to respond. Seems to work decently, but I often find I end
up with a lot of yellow-flagged items because other people don't have as good
E-mail habits.

~~~
pferde
A suggestion from someone who uses a similar system: get rid of yellow flags,
and simply move those emails to whatever archive folder the "completed" emails
would go to. A task where you're waiting for input from someone else is a task
for that someone else, not for you. As such, it has no place in your inbox.

All in all, using inbox as a TODO list has been a great arrangement for me -
both at work and privately.

~~~
blfr
This only seems to work when you interact exclusively with very reliable
people. What if they never get back to you with their input?

~~~
pferde
In that case, if it's something they need, you can forget about it. If, on the
other hand, it's something you need, then you need to treat the e-mail as a
reminder that you need to follow up - essentially, another item in your TODO -
so it needs to stay in your inbox.

Well, I wrote "you need to", but I'm describing what works for me. :) YMMV,
obviously.

------
CydeWeys
I've been using Inbox for Gmail (
[https://inbox.google.com](https://inbox.google.com) ) since launch and it
handles most of the things the author talks about. Emails are treated as
tasks, and it's a single mouse click or keyboard shortcut to do any of the
following: create a reminder based on a given email, pin it for easier later
retrieval, or archive it. That's basically how I manage my mail, along with a
simple trick from "Getting Things Done" (which I haven't read), which is that
if a task is only going to take a short time, do it immediately rather than
putting it off.

~~~
pferde
Careful about those "quick tasks", you might die a death from thousand cuts.
If you're doing something that takes time and concentration, it takes effort
to context-switch your brain away from it, do the "quick task", and then
context-switch back. If you keep getting distracted from the "big task",
chances are that you will start making mistakes, or just do it badly. It's
better to defer these "quick tasks", and then do them all at once - thus
minimizing the context-switching from and to your "big task".

Just tell people that you'll get on their task "[in an hour/later today/today
until lunch/...]", AND THEN REALLY DO IT, like an adult, responsible person.
No touchy-feely patronizing nonsense about forgetting the tasks you defer,
we're not schoolchildren.

~~~
CydeWeys
Oh, I'm not processing email constantly, and definitely not while I'm in the
flow. When I am processing email I've already set aside some time for it, and
finish off the simple tasks immediately.

------
overgard
I'm one of those people with a bajillion unread emails -- 15,615 at the
moment, but I feel like this is manufacturing a problem I don't have. Inbox
zero or whatever does nothing for me. Here's like a sample of things I haven't
bothered to click: "YMCA membership survey", "Recommended coursera courses",
"grubhub order", "Mailing list update for a blog I read sometimes". These
aren't really things I feel any sort of pressure to read, but I haven't put in
a filter on them either because sometimes I want to see them. They're not
really blocking me from seeing my important emails.

This notion that I'm "bad" at email or that I need to "do" something about
this; why would I want to fix something that's working pretty much exactly how
I want?

I could go mark them read even though I haven't read them and don't
momentarily care to, but that only holds value to me if you assume that I view
my unread email counter like some sort of unfinished task list -- which I
don't. It's literally just a measure of things I haven't read. It means
nothing to me.

~~~
soyiuz
Hmm. The problem with that approach is that among many things that mean
nothing in your inbox, there are some that are quite meaningful. And these
have the potential to get lost among the noise.

~~~
overgard
They don't get lost -- I'm quite literally saying this is not a problem for
me. I have no intention of prescribing how other people should organize their
email, because I can't imagine any universe where I would actually care about
that, but this extremely long winded essay about how the way I'm doing it is
_wrong_ strikes me as absurd. I also think it's pretty weird someone would
take the time to diagnose my apparent character flaws based on my email
habits, and then propose solutions. Uh, thanks? Of all the world's problems
focusing on why some people leave email unread seems borderline OCD.

Not to mention that a lot of the author's inferences are pretty insulting.
"This means that when someone asks you to do a thing, you probably aren’t
going to do it. You’re going to pretend to commit to it, and then you’re going
to flake out when push comes to shove. You’re going to keep context-switching
until all the deadlines have passed." Wow, really, you got all of that because
I didn't bother to hit "Mark Read" on my grubhub order confirmation?

~~~
dack
Many people have a legitimate problem handling their email and drop things on
the floor they wish they didn't. It doesn't sound like you're one of those
people, so the article wasn't for you, and that's fine.

For me _personally_, I archive the unimportant emails (like a grubhub order)
so I don't waste time scanning over it next time i check my email. If I never
archive it, I might end up scanning over it several times for no reason, and
with keyboard shortcuts I can hit "x y j" once and not have deal with it
again.

Your way is fine too. I just think some people really do need help being more
organized and I thought the article did a pretty good job of talking about the
non-technical problems many of them (but not you) have.

~~~
overgard
I would have zero issues if he was just proposing a solution to a problem that
some people have, but he hasn't done that. He's suggested that using email in
certain ways is _incorrect_ and that it implies _bad things about you_.

"In other words: The thing you are bad at is saying ‘no’ to people. "

For fucks sake.

I'd also have no issues if this was on like the third page, but the fact it
has this many upvotes suggests people agree with this, which makes me wonder:
1) WHY do you all care about other people's inbox habits? How does this impact
you? Why do you even think it's your business in the least bit? 2) WHY do you
presume you can actually infer anything important about a person based on
that, to the point of saying some very insulting things about their character?

The author seems to believe we all inhabit the same bizarre world he does,
where apparently most email is worthless, and yet your response to this
apparently worthless stream of information implies many things about your
character with a great deal of certainty. Like, what the fuck? Maybe there's a
common sense middle ground where I get email notifications about things that
don't require much action but are somewhat valuable to have, and I can read
fast enough to parse the important things in a few seconds without having to
spend significant time thinking about my email process.

------
feiss
I don't understand people complaining with lots of unread emails.. If you
didn't read an email from X days ago or older, you won't ever do it. Just mark
as read all [unread] mail from X days ago till the beginning of Time, and you
are set to go.

------
kirykl
What I despise most the is the desk drop in, especially for things that could
be easily emailed. Sometimes even interrupting me to alert me in person that
you've sent me an email.

However I've been told by a manager to use the desk drop in more, to get more
visibility and make it look like I'm engaging with the team to outside
observers

~~~
gjolund
I recently had a manager say the same thing to me about Slack.

The founders were apparently trolling the tech channels and my name didn't
come up enough. Mostly because I was busy working and not incessantly spamming
giphy nonsense.

Needless to say I quit.

~~~
stephengillie
Some workplaces have the "fish-bowl" feeling, and Slack can really amplify
that. Imagine having alerts come into a channel where your boss's boss is
watching you acknowledge them, DM'ing him critiques of your work in realtime.

~~~
gjolund
That is exactly what happened. The company is now imploding because the
entirety of senior engineering staff has resigned over the last two weeks.

One of our founders left herself logged in on a QA device, needless to say the
entire team got to read her emails for two weeks without her knowledge.

------
schizoidboy
What do people think about using email as an alternative to social networks -
i.e. creating lists of email addresses (groups), and sending out photos,
jokes, opinions, etc. to those groups (e.g. an "All" group to send life
updates, a "Cool" group that can take any joke, etc.)?

~~~
kerryfalk
I can't tell if this is clever baiting or not. This _was_ email with friends
before MySpace.

~~~
randlet
Curious how old the OP is because I got a good chuckle out of his comment.

~~~
schizoidboy
31 :-)

I miss the pen-pal days of emails between friends.

------
phobius
Seems to have been hn'd

Here's a google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2016/04/email-
isnt-the-problem.html)

------
siquick
Completely agree.

We use Skype chat at my company for internal communications and it is far more
distracting than email.

Some people seem to 'over-communicate' when using real-time chat, meaning that
my Skype is flashing non-stop. Yes, I can turn off the notifications but then,
what's the point of using real-time chat versus email?

~~~
tedmiston
I have noticed this too. I find it distracting and often low signal to noise
discussion.

I keep Slack on Do Not Disturb mode anytime I'm writing code. If someone
really _needs_ to reach me in realtime, they can @ me to trigger the icon
badge. Our Slack team has hundreds of messages a day, but of those maybe 2-3
require my immediate attention.

------
katheriin
Email wasn't designed to be used the way we use it now.

It's not a to-do list protocol. In fact, as Paul Graham has put it, it's a
disastrously bad todo list (Source:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html))

It's not a messaging protocol - email was never built for conversations, which
is why conversations over email often get clunky, confusing and finding some
piece of information later is near-impossible.

No wonder people just plain don't like email as a communication method. It was
invented in the 70s and it was intended for much lower volumes (Source:
[http://www.techworld.com/startups/skype-cofounder-jaan-
talli...](http://www.techworld.com/startups/skype-cofounder-jaan-tallinn-
hails-his-new-startup-fleep-as-skype-im-on-steroids-3609697/))

The thing is, most 'email killers' like Slack are closed systems and thus have
no shot at replacing email - the reason why email has persevered is its
openness, how it is the lowest common denominator in online communications
(ahem, 2,5bn users worldwide).

Instead of a new open protocol, Fleep ([https://fleep.io](https://fleep.io))
has built a messenger that relies on the email protocol by integrating with
email seamlessly. With Fleep, you can send messages to anyone who has an email
address - if they're not a Fleep user yet, they will receive the messages as
normal emails. As a Fleep user, however, you already get the improved
conversational experience of emails.

(Full disclosure: I do work at Fleep and I absolutely love the product, the
ambition and the ingenious approach our founding team has taken to merging IM
& email.)

~~~
kps
Email _was_ built for conversations. Reverse in everything read to people
forcing by that ruined Office Microsoft unfortunately.

~~~
T-hawk
Microsoft didn't force that, they reflected it. Microsoft just made their
software facilitate what users actually wanted to do. They don't care about
all that tedious effort to scroll and selectively trim and indent and format
quotes for a neatly curated conversation. They just want to start typing. They
just want all that junk out of their way. Microsoft merely reduced resistance
to what users were already finding natural to do.

------
foxylad
Good read. I like his point that you should read your inbox oldest first, or
else you reward the most annoying correspondents. This also encourages the
"handle it once" ethos, because you need to traverse older items to get to new
ones.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be any way to tell Gmail to sort by ascending date
- please enlighten me if there is.

------
orblivion
One thing I would say in disagreement is that you can use filters and labels
to your advantage even with this mentality. I agree that keeping things
labeled and archived hasn't done me much good. Lately what I do instead is use
filters to label things by category, just so I can archive them faster. As I
archive, I also remove the label. For instance, "Newsletter", "Transaction",
etc. When I look at a bunch of things of one type, I don't have to make as big
a context switch between them, and I can quickly determine which I care about.
("Recruiter" is a fun filter that is a perpetual work in progress.)

------
spyspy
I've found the trick to email is filter/delete/archive with extreme prejudice.
It's hard to fall into but-I-might-need-it-later mode if you never saw it in
the first place.

------
dahdum
OT, but my first reaction to this article was how much I loved that font.
Looked it up, it's Monda, and available on Google Fonts
[https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Monda](https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Monda).

------
mirimir
tl;dr : "Turn Messages Into Tasks"

Man, I miss Agenda :( It basically did that automatically.

~~~
oever
I've been looking for a different interface for email that focuses on actions
and not emails. Other types of communication, e.g. RSS, could feed actions
into the same interface. Every incoming email is an intended action: a text
that you intend to read and decide to either take any number of actions on.

At different times of the day, different filters apply. During work hours,
only work mails and a few personal contacts get through the filter and on my
'read mail' task. I perform the 'read mail' task a few times during work.

Outside of work, only mails with private topics will get through. Phone and
text can be used for urgent work issues. For mailing lists, each updated
thread is one read task.

Every read task can lead to one or more immediate or intended actions.
Intended actions have categories.

Different types of actions:

\- current action: the action I'm taking right now

\- action stack: a current action can lead to a small subactions

\- intended action: action that is in the system and shows up as a possible
current action. This includes sports and cooking.

\- planned action: an action with a fixed start time, usually these are
synchronous with actions of other people e.g. meetings or travel.

An important feature of this interface is to group and filter actions by
context. When working on project X, only show actions of project X. This
reduces the huge number of context switches the many people struggle with.

Every action that is taken is linked to the action that led to it. Sending
email gives the option to create an intended action for a follow-up when there
is no reply from the receiver within a set time.

While an action is being performed, your computer IO is monitored. These data
packets, e.g. git commits, changed files, emails sent, visited web pages, sent
web forms, can be included in an action report. This way, there is a simple
report after each action.

All action reports form your archive. The archive are your past actions, they
are out of your way once you've dealt with them.

------
Animats
Saying "No" does help. I answer much mail with "UNSUBSCRIBE", then blacklist
the sender in Thunderbird. Almost all spam gets filtered, as do messages
mentioning "survey" or "webinar".

------
grinich
If anyone wants to help build this stuff, you should build a plugin on Nylas
N1. :) [https://github.com/nylas/n1](https://github.com/nylas/n1)

------
jes5199
> but the defining characteristic of email is that it is the primary mode of
> communication that we use, both professionally and personally, when we are
> asking someone else to perform a task.

what the fuck. This is so specious. I don't use email this way at all.

------
vmateixeira
The website looks down.. any mirror?

