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Stop sending emails for real time requests
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- stollercyrus 13y agoThat might work for you, but having to constantly check email interrupts my ability to work efficiently. Technically any of these channels can deliver the message. I'm just hoping that my contacts can assign different priorities to each.
- jmulder 13y agoBut that's not the point. The point is to have easy to understand cues for the receiver on how important the message is, with the sole goal not to disturb them for messages that do not require immediate attention. A phone call can always be followed by a confirmation e-mail explaining it again for archiving purposes, but it is incredibly selfish of a sender to assume that the receiver will immediately read and act on the e-mail he receives. Most of us just get too many e-mails to assume every e-mail is important -- it's usually the complete opposite anyway.
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- ishener 13y agoThe reason people use email for everything, including urgent matters, is because email is the only thing of the 4 channels mentioned in the article that we usually type on a full size keyboard. It's much more convenient when working than calling/texting/IM(when the phone is needed) the proper solution is prioritizing email, and making your email client/device notify you according to the priority level
- stollercyrus 13y agoI'm suggesting that we make prioritization part of the medium that is used to convey the message. How do you prioritize your inbound emails?
- ishener 13y agoisn't it redundant to use different mediums just for noting the importance? seems not efficient, especially when there are many types of IM. it's much better to have everything in one place i'm not prioritizing, right now it's not possible, maybe except for this solution: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t... i'm just saying THAT is the proper solution, i'm not saying it's possible...
- stollercyrus 13y agoI don't understand the harm in the redundancy you're talking about.
- bcraven 13y agoI completely agree with this- emails are cross-platform and available on the vast majority of connected devices, no phone required. The IM option of this theory also fails to mention that the number of different IM options all fail to talk to each other, or even an overarching client (like Pidgin or imo). Remembering which of my contacts use Snapchat vs Whatsapp vs Facebook vs Hangouts seems utterly incompatible with the idea of the internet connecting people.
- MasterScrat 13y agoYes plus a lot of these networks fail pretty hard... with Gtalk/Hangouts for example it's not rare to miss notifications because you got them on the laptop but not on your phone, or the opposite. Also Whatsapp stupidly doesn't provide a web or desktop interface. Skype on mobile devices uses way more power than it should. In the end I hate Facebook for a number of reasons but it's the only reliable solution I have found so far: fast, reliable, (nearly) everyone is there.
- th0br0 13y agoYou actually forgot that many people still send physical letters -> 1 week or more?
- stollercyrus 13y agoGood point ... I probably should add fax as well :P
- culturestate 13y agoI do quite a bit of work in Japan, and you would not believe the amount of time I spend faxing documents back and forth. I once had a service provider — who I know personally — hang up and refuse to speak to me on the phone until I had faxed in a form designating myself as a contact.
- justinmarsan 13y agoIM and Phone call feel the exact same to me, except IM enables you to show your availability status to the people you're connected to. < 30 minutes : IM if I'm available, if else call 2 hours : IM if away/busy, if else text ... If someone appears as available and online and takes a day to answer my question, I'm not sure how I'd take it but it would piss me off. On a sidenote, I think email is best suited for "when you're done with whatever you're doing' kind of timeframes due to the "mark as unread" which would prevent me from forgetting to reply if I decide to read what I received, realized I can't/don't want to answer right now.
- stollercyrus 13y agoI see what you're saying. Unfortunately, I'm not good about making sure my away status is up to date. I'll often go a whole day, saying I'm away, even though I'm available.
- jhgg 13y agoI'm actually quite the opposite. I usually have my phone off or silenced when I'm in the middle of working. That being said, I'll take a break every half an hour or so to check up on my e-mail inbox and address the urgent messages. I also absolutely despise when people text me with "call me asap", "hi", "yo", "hey", or any other meaningless variant. It's vague and I have no idea if what they need is actually important or something that I can address later, without needing to interrupt my workflow. Rather, if you must text me, I much prefer some context and information about issue in the message, i.e: "call me asap, i have a question about ______/i need _______." Really, I prefer an e-mail of a few or more sentences describing what you need. Above all, I try to avoid the following interaction via text messages: > Hey < Sup? > Nm, do you have a sec? < Yeah, what do you need? > I need blah blah blah blah. Why can't people just do: > Hey, when you have a sec, I need blah blah blah blah... This is texting, not TCP.
- stollercyrus 13y agoI agree with your point re: pseudo TCP. I don't like that I feel the need to compulsively check my email. It always takes me longer to respond than it should.
- hnriot 13y agoI don't get the part about needing to check your email as in anyway difficult? My iPhone with the gmail app has a very pleasant tone when I get an email in my priority inbox. I don't have to check anything or be compulsive on any way.
- stollercyrus 13y agoYou must be better at multitasking than me. Those types of interruptions take me out of the zone.
- MasterScrat 13y ago> Hey, when you have a sec, I need blah blah blah blah... Yes please. This even works well when you're working with colleagues in the same office: it's real-time but it doesn't interrupt your thought flow.
- halfpipe 13y agoI prefer to use email for most communications as it makes it a whole lot easier to pull up past conversations. If I'd had communication in the form of calls, texts, IM's (probably on multiple clients) as well as email, it'd probably be more difficult to pull up any information that I may need later on. Using email alone allows me to search for specific conversations, and not have the trouble of losing or having great difficulty finding conversations. I do occasionally use Skype and IRC, but I know which people I communicate with on these platforms, and keep on top of documenting anything I may later need to refer to. I agree that if you need something urgently, then a call can be great. However, for general communication, I see no issue with using email. I think it'd be a more interesting topic to discuss how to efficiently use subject headings, as I've often had important emails slip under the radar, and less important emails demand some form of urgency that isn't existent.
- stollercyrus 13y agoI agree that general communication is a different animal all together. I'm talking about when you need someone to do something.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y agoAll my realtime 'pings' (phone/text/im) inevitably start with some form of the question: "Hi, how busy are you?" IMHO, this is a sneaky way to get the person to be honest about their immediate availability. By acknowledging straightaway that they might be busy, I give them a polite 'out', of sorts. If I urgently need something done, my openings are usually of the form, "Listen, I have a(n urgent) favor to ask. How busy are you?" Almost always works for me regardless of the communication medium used. Email, by its very nature, is supposed to be asynchronous. I wouldn't rely on email to convey anything more than delayed request/response conversation.
- stollercyrus 13y agoI like your "Hi, how busy are you?" approach.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y agoThanks. I realized a few years ago that that was the question I would have asked myself, if I were to interrupt myself when I was in the middle of doing something important. It has served me well ever since... :)
- vidarh 13y agoWhen someone start a request in a near-realtime medium with stuff like that, I instantly get annoyed as it is immediately wasting time for me in having to respond and way for their actual request. I much prefer you make the request right away without waiting, and just tacks on whatever pleasantries you feel necessary. Then I don't need to roundtrip with you to figure out whether or not what you are requesting is actually more important than what I am doing right now.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y agoI see what you mean, but, personally, I'd much rather have the recipient ignore me than get yanked out of 'the zone' with my query that may or may not be up their alley. It is not so much pleasantries as a super-short 'SYN-ACK' and then straight to the point. Also, as I was mentioning in another comment, people on my realtime communication media contact list are quite close - the kind who would definitely respond to a SYN-req with stoic silence. I guess, it is a communication quirk that has evolved around my network and may not be true about the rest of the world. Apologies if I made it sound like that. As I said in another comment, to each their own. Shall we agree to differ on this one? :)
- lazyjones 13y agoTexting and using IM is bad advice. It's such bad habits that cause us to feel anxious because we need to be reachable via N different channels all the time. Better advice: use the phone if it's urgent and you need to talk to someone immediately, otherwise use e-mail to allow the recipient to process your request asynchronously. It's not your fault if they have issues with e-mail in general.
- hnriot 13y agoHow is the phone any different to txt in this regard? Both use the same channel and txt has the advantage that it's less invasive. Txt/bbm/iMessage etc are all much better options than calling someone. For me and most of my friends the phone is the last resort, I hate talking on the phone.
- lazyjones 13y ago> How is the phone any different to txt in this regard? The phone is immediate, you can talk to someone now if they are available at all. Texting is asynchronous and people cannot tell from the notification sound whether it's urgent or not and may choose to ignore messages for a while. > For me and most of my friends the phone is the last resort, I hate talking on the phone. I guess you must be texting too much. Old people like me, while hating the phone too, despise texting with its cumbersome, slow input and frequently unimportant use cases. If people would stick to text for important stuff only, it might be more useful. But they don't, so it isn't. The same goes for IM, it's just a distraction channel.
- gr3yh47 13y agoTexting and using IM is bad advice. This is a personal preference at best and an absurdly overbroad and flatly incorrect statement at worst
- ljoshua 13y agoIt's important to realize that everyone has a different social contract for how quickly they expect responses across different channels. The better advice is to actually have open, honest conversations with those you work with most frequently and those with whom communication is important to define and understand how people are going to perceive those different channels and contracts. Setting up social contracts for different communication expectations doesn't have to result in everyone having the same guidelines, but does let you know that Alice is okay with texts while Bob really prefers emails to be allow 8hrs+ for replies.
- rdl 13y agoI wish there were a way for recipients to define a message routing and format conversion protocol, incentivized by money. e.g., you can call me at night for $5k. You can call me during "phone hour" for $100. You an call at other times for $250. If your call turns out to be worth my time, I don't bill you; if it was a waste of my time (spam, pointless, etc.), I'll charge up to 100% of that amount. Senders would get to see a menu of costs for various technologies, and would get to see how I handle them (various guarantees). They may vary based on sender, topic, etc. e.g. I'd be willing to take YC applicant advice emails during a few weeks of the year for 10% of normal price, with a guaranteed response within 12h. I'd charge a lot less for email than for phone, etc. Part of this would be some kind of ecash system, and the other part would be format conversion; being able to turn phone calls into text messages, read back to the user to verify.
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- Encosia 13y agoBy far, the most important thing is to understand your recipient's preference, not the technical merits of a particular medium/protocol. I'm active in several tennis leagues locally. Between arranging team practice, scheduling flex matches, putting together pick-up practice matches, etc, I spend a lot of time communicating with a diverse group of folks about last minute planning updates. Though I generally prefer email for most things since it immediately pushes to my phone just the same as a text or IM, it's been interesting to discover the wide range of preferences that other people have. Some people are 100% email, period, and will respond to emails from red lights, just a few minutes away from meeting you in person. A surprising number of people in their 30s and 40s do not have Facebook accounts (not out of privacy concerns, but general disinterest), completely ruling out Facebook messages/IMs. Some people do prefer text messages, but I haven't found that SMS guarantees any particular immediacy. Some people actually reply to their emails hours quicker than their texts. A few people I've dealt with share a single email account with their spouse and/or only check email once or twice a day (which blows my mind on both counts...). I'm talking about people young and active enough to play competitive tennis too, not your grandparents. In one of those cases, I can get in touch with the guy in real-time almost every time by using iMessage. A few people insist on Skype, Google Hangouts, WhatApp, or some other proprietary network. Guess what? If I want to get in touch with them ASAP, I suck it up and use their preferred network. Maybe the weirdest one is there are a few people I can most reliably get in touch with via Twitter DMs, even though I have their phone number. Point being, selecting an optimal set of communication protocols almost always fails when that set of rules comes in contact with the real world. If you really want to get in touch with people immediately and consistently, you have to tailor your approach to the person.
- blowski 13y agoThis is an excellent point. Perhaps putting your preferences on your email signature, your profile on the corporate intranet, or your personal website's 'contact me' page would be helpful. Also, it can be good to explicitly define a company culture. I've worked in some places where I'd receive "VERY URGENT" emails, and others where email was used merely as a 'cover your arse' policy but everything else was done in person. FWIW, I prefer to have a conversation in person (or over the phone) and follow this up with an email - even for very short conversations. I like to be prodded via SMS. I hate IM (short conversations turn into long conversations that I can't search later), don't use Facebook or Twitter. But only about 10% of my conversations happen in the way I want them to.
- ramoq 13y agoIt's important to note that email is often the only contact info you'll have for a person. In fact I would highly prefer not to share my other social contact points(cell # etc). Email wins big in this regard. Really big.
- jaggederest 13y agoMakes no difference to me, honestly. Calls, texts, IM, and of course email all go to my inbox, and all are equally accessible. I never answer voice calls unless they're pre-scheduled (and even then I much prefer to call than be called). The transcribed message goes in my email. 99% of the time, the ringer on my phone is off, unless there's a specific reason to have it on. Often my phone is off. Texts go both to my phone directly, IM, and as an email.
- jpswade 13y agoI much prefer people to spend the time constructing a clear request in an email than an ad hoc phone call, especially those that are out of the blue. If you call me, you'd better follow up with an email. If you email me and it's urgent, you'd better follow up with a phone call. That's all there is to it.
- smileysteve 13y agoFor work, I'd much rather receive an email than a text. We have smartphones, I can get your email just as easily as I get your text. Texts are for personally urgent things that don't merit the complexity of a phone call (it fits in 160 characters) And the Phone call priority is incorrect if you consider voicemail (which it seems that nobody does any more). If I'm in a meeting, a call is actually much lower priority to me than a text. I only escalate a phone call during a meeting if I get the call many times, or if a text indicates the urgency.
- stollercyrus 13y agoIt seems like you have a different convention that works for you. I think the most important thing is that you have one that the people who are asking you to do things are aware of.
- alist1 13y agoAn important consideration, for me, is having an easily searchable record of conversations. Because of this, for work-related issues, I definitely prefer email or gchat, which affords almost the same search-ability. What I hate most are medium-switches when conversation threads are spread across emails, gchats, and texts.
- stollercyrus 13y agoI agree having a searchable record is useful. I try to send a follow up email to confirm what was said during phone calls.
- collyw 13y agoI get requests through every medium described here, as well as coming into the office to ask me. Email is nice in that you can have a relatively long description that will be searchable later on. It can have formatting and attachments (you don't get the same level of formatting IM, and afterwards it isn't as easy to search). Also its kind of nice to not respond immediately when I am in "in the zone".