Note to users of technology called Electronic Mail
Posted 2004 Dec 07
I love this rant. But, Jeremy forgot (perhaps in the heat of passion) these two other fantastic annoyances:
- Users who send all their messages with High Importance! That designates every email as having equally high importance, thus diluting the import of all of them. Regardless, they are usually meant to nag about something. That is High Annoyance, not High Importance.
- Email where the body is in the Subject, e.g. Subject: Please have all of your time entered by the end of the day on Friday, Dec. 3. You know you’ve received one of those before.
But Jeremy did mention what I think is the biggest problem with email: the compulsion to respond quickly and unthinkingly. I’ve found that the best remedy for this is to just turn off your email client and set aside a particular time of day to read your mail, say once in the morning and once at the end of the day. Hey, if it’s that important—they can use a phone.