Jan 8th, 2009 |
Continuing my Power of Less theme, I recently received an email message that seemed to me to be the wave of the future. I sent a note to someone about speaking at our conference and received an automated response (in the voice of her email bot) telling me that the person is off on vacation without the Internet or email. Pretty normal, but then this:
She will be gone until January 19 and decided to take an email sabbatical. This means that no emails received during her vacation will be stored, including your message. In other words, she will NOT receive your message. It won’t be waiting for her because I’ve been instructed to throw everything away so that she can come home to a little less stress.
Why didn’t I think of this? Or even if I had, would it cause a ruckus at my company? Would it be seen as unprofessional? I’ve already set my outgoing voicemail message on my desk phone to explain that I will not listen to messages left here (it gives my cell phone number; I do listen to those messages, usually), and I think that might be the extent of the tolerance for my communication pickiness. But seriously, what’s worse, telling someone who really wants to contact you to try back when you’ve returned, or spending all your time sorting through irrelevant, outdated threads instead of actually returning important messages?
Luis Suarez, speaking at Web 2.0 Expo Europe last year, encouraged the audience to give up completely on corporate email, as he has done (here’s the video). What he’s selling, I’m buying, but from the people I spoke to, I’m in the minority. Okay, to be fair, I’m not taking him literally. There’s a place for email, but it’s abused. As Luis said, “It doesn’t make me more productive.” I’m sure it depends wildly on the nature of your job, but at the end of the day I often look back and see that I got through a lot of my email, but not my to do list. Email is so reactive, and so rarely closes the loop.
Possibly irrationally, I credit Twitter with what might be called a trend here. Twitter reminded us that you can be in communication with others without creating a backlog of messages every time you’re away from the computer. Luis says:
You wake up and go on Twitter and ask “Anything happen since last night?” And your community says no, nothing really, move on.
This is kind of how things were before email. You went on vacation and you came back and asked what happened. It took 10 minutes, not two days. It’s the sane way to live. I’m in.
It’s an auto reply you wouldn’t expect in the first place. I really like that approach and don’t think it’s unprofessional. Here is an e-mail of the same nature I received this summer and also thought it was worth a blog post: http://tinyurl.com/8lx4ey enjoy!
Hi Jennifer - love this post, its very timely when coming back to an avalanche of email and voice mails after the holidays.
I remember a well-known executive once said when he came back from vacation he took the 100’s of emails in his inbox and simply deleted them - he said that if anything was really urgent enough someone would get on him - and it sounds very logical - instead of spending hours going through your emails - wait to see what comes back to you and deal with that.
After spending a half day during my vacation just trying to consolidate my to-do lists I finally gave up, unplugged for 4 days and actually enjoyed the down time. I figured if anything was truly urgent, someone would call me - and thankfully no one did. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy and just need to give ourselves permission to unplug.
Interesting to see this.
I’ve considered doing something similar next time I’m on vacation (as if): Setting an auto response that folders all mail received in a set period, and replies to incoming messages saying, essentially, “I’m on personal time off from [date] to [date] and will not be receiving your message. Due to the high volume of email and the impossibility of ever catching up, your message won’t be read when I return. Please resend your message after [return date].”
This way, the incoming messages are still available for your use later if you need them, but the sender gets their expectations re-set, realistically..
Call it a sabbatical, call it email chapter 11, call it common sense.
The most common plaint i hear from colleagues returning from vacation is that they dread returning to their in box, to the point where time-off isn’t especially beneficial to them, and their productivity is low for at least a week after they return.
Missing video. Another link?
A successful day is when I have 0 emails in my inbox that I received that day. But then on my drive home I realize I didn’t get much accomplished because I was at my desk all day instead out with the people I work for.
Regarding setting expectations, check out what Expo New York’s keynote Gary Vaynerchuk sends in response to every email he gets:
http://tv.winelibrary.com/garyvs-inbox
Well, this approach seems to be catching on.
I think as long as you’re clear with people so they can adjust their expectations, it’s the most honest thing. And therefore the most professional.
Merlin Mann of 43folders agrees
http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/09/pretending
[...] January I wrote about a speaker I had contacted who was on email sabbatical. I didn’t name her at the time, but it was danah boyd, who, being back from sabbatical now, [...]