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Killing Email: How and Why I Ditched My Inbox

22 points by oscardelben 17y ago

JacobAldridge 17y ago
Interesting, and for the most part sounds feasible. But for me, I'd rather check my Inbox than Twitter. And I'd rather people emailed me than called me, since most of the time they'd get a voicemail which I would have to pay to retrieve, and then I'd call them and it wouldn't be convenient, and then ... And while some things (think long discussions) are done better verbally than by email, there's a lot of other things (like Reports from clients, or my global office) for which email is the only alternative to actual mail (since, and again this is for me, the chances of any of them diving into Google Docs or Wikis in the next 3 years is negligible).
jsz0 17y ago
I guess I'm old fashioned. I like e-mail. I like having everything collected together in one spot. I like being able to make one set of filtering/sorting rules. I like being able to segment my communication into work & personal e-mail addresses. It seems to me this strategy simply pushes stuff around to new places. I can't imagine dealing with Twitter, increased telephone call volume, more IMs, etc actually makes things easier but it's a personal choice. Probably depends a lot on what type of people are contacting you and what exactly they want.
jacquesm 17y ago
I work a lot with people in different timezones, email is nicely asynchronous and that is why I think it will be with me for a long long time. I got rid of IM though, that was simply too much of a distraction, so much 'stream of consciousness' because of the too-low barrier that it becomes overwhelming. Email has just the right barrier of entry to me, it is relatively cheap for me to check and a lot of work on the part of the sender. If I'm not interested the cost is near 0, if I'm interested it can go quite far. Also, for anybody in bussiness for themselves not checking email is a limiting move imo, snappy response to email is very much appreciated by customers and collaborators alike.
- jedc 17y ago
  I completely agree with IM; I avoid it if at all possible. There's too much of a time lag between responses so it seems slow, but because it's live it's very hard to turn my attention away. Email I can at least deal with on my own terms.
- unalone 17y ago
  I use email the same way I use IM and Facebook. I've heard all three described as time-wasters. I find that ridiculous. Each is a medium designed for a specific thing; each can be abused; each can be a boon if it's used right. Only email the people that you really have to email with, keep everybody else in a junk folder. Block all but the five or six IM names you'd care to have a live conversation with. You'll find it impossible to waste your time.
Torn 17y ago
Except, he hasn't ditched email at all. 6. A few types of emails will get through for now. My filters allow emails for advertisers, interviews, refunds, and people who want to hire me, to get through to my inbox [...] I’m working on automating these processes via the web Even if he 'automates processes via the web' that's still having to spend time to read, process, and deal with text content sent by others. Rather than ditch email, he seems to have put forward a plan for receiving less of it.
- derefr 17y ago
  > ...having to spend time to read, process, and deal with text content sent by others. Not doing so wouldn't be ditching email, that would be ditching communication.
  - Torn 17y ago
    That's completely in-line with my point -- that 'ditching' email isn't necessarily getting rid of the time and effort involved in dealing with others' communication
robryan 17y ago
Twitter also allows more ability to get distracted than the averages persons email inbox. At least with email everything is directed at you.
swaroop 17y ago
So he's giving up one inbox (email) for another (twitter)? It's going to be an interesting experiment because people are not really expected to reply back to every message on Twitter, so will people get ticked off if Leo doesn't reply to tweets? If Leo had instead responded only to really important emails and not every single email, would he have achieved the same results? I hope Leo posts an update on the same two months from now, would like to see if he has indeed got rid of inboxes (irrespective of whether it is email or twitter)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I think he's too obsessive about his inbox, whatever it is to make it work. If you can't deal with your email inbox then I don't see how switching to another kind of inbox is going to solve the problem. It's a self discipline issue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with email, if used well. Prioritization would go a long way to getting the problem solved. Stuff that's urgent I take care of when it reaches me, stuff that is to be taken care of goes on the back burner until I have a spare moment, some stuff I never get around to. That's life. It applies to just about everything from maintaining a house to managing your communications.
hbien 17y ago
I wish I got email - that is, instead of phone calls. People still call me for non urgent items, like calling me on the weekend to remind me to do something on Monday. Even worse, phone calls with list of feature requests and bug reports. I'd be so happy if these were all written down in an email - even better if they were entered directly into the bug tracker.
- pmichaud 17y ago
  You need to stop that. You teach people how to treat you. You've obviously been a bad teacher 8)
extension 17y ago
I'm not a big fan of email but replacing it with a hodge-podge of trendy, proprietary services is a terrible idea. We need to consolidate communication, not fragment it more than it already is coughgooglewavecough.
enneff 17y ago
If a so-called productivity expert has problems with "checking email multiple times a day, of responding over and over throughout the day, deleting spam and unsubscribing from newsletters and unwanted notices, filtering out messages and notifications, deleting those dumb forwarded jokes and chain mails" then they might want to consider a career change. I've been using email for 20 years, and I only receive work-related mail (that I read at appropriate intervals to my workflow), the occasional personal email, and specific automated emails that are filtered to specific folders (where I can give them attention when I need to). I never receive chain mail or stupid jokes, because I don't deal with the type of idiots who send that kind of stuff. Those who did send me that sort of stuff were told in no uncertain terms that I'm not interested in it, and it stopped immediately (this doesn't mean I was nasty about it, though). I almost choked laughing when he said he was ditching email for Twitter. Twitter is possibly the least efficient and reliable Internet-based communications medium. And I say this as someone whose profession is software to make greater sense of that medium. Was this piece meant to be satire? It just seems ridiculous to me.
jrockway 17y ago
I stopped reading after he said he replaced email with Twitter.
- pmichaud 17y ago
  I saw that coming when I read the headline, but I have to say that at least one thing is really compelling about the switch: people have to be concise. When people have to be concise they put more thought into 1) The communication itself 2) Whether the communication is even necessary That is a positive.
  - tetha 17y ago
    On the other hand, you cannot compress all messages into 140 characters. Recently, we had to setup some buildfiles in this university project and after a while, things grew pretty weird, so we started to exchange informations about what I had done, what I thought that meant and so on. There is no way this information would be transmitted better via 28 140-character-twitter messages or something else. In this case, a nice well-formatted email with each step in a paragraph was the best way to communicate this and it worked very well.
tybris 17y ago
I have a 1-2 weeks response time for most things. Works great to limit the stream.
edw519 17y ago
This is exactly the opposite of how I operate. I love email. Why? Because I'm a programmer and I don't want to be interrupted. I like to keep the day-to-day things simple because my work is anything but simple. I use gmail and everyone I know has my gmail address. It has excellent spam filters and it's easy to manage. Best of all, it never bothers me. When I'm ready for a break, I check and manage my email. It takes 5 minutes, just enough time to eat an apple. Family, close friends, and some business associates have my cell phone #. They know not to text me because if I'm working, I will not respond. If I'm not working, the only response they'll get is "ok". If the phone rings, I know it must be important to talk. Usually not for long, then back to work. I do not IM. I do not Twitter. I can't imagine worse ways to ruin productivity. I IM'd for 3 days. I got nothing done, so I emailed everyone to never IM me again. Email me and I'll respond when I'm available. I surf my favorite sites (especially hn) during breaks. When the break is over, on go the headphones and up comes my text editor. See you in an hour or two. Not before then.
- unalone 17y ago
  Do you use Gmail's chat, perchance? It's a nice way to quickly talk to those folks who use Gmail too. How do you enforce your breaks? I'm still trying to beat some self-discipline into me.
  - edw519 17y ago
    I make no distinction between Gmail's chat and any other chat. I don't use them. For 99% of my communication, email is fine. For anything more urgent, I prefer the phone. I don't "enforce breaks". My body lets me know when it's time. My critical path is usually eyestrain, but it could be anything. "I'm still trying to beat some self-discipline into me." Don't. You can't win that battle. Even if you do, it will only be temporary. I look at it completely differently. I absolutely love what I'm doing so much that I have to pull myself away for breaks. Do you love what you're working on? If so, discipline will never be a problem. If not, then why not? Solve that problem and discipline will never be a problem. Either way, discipline is never a problem. Working on the right thing and devouring it is the solution. You don't worry about enforcing discipline when you're eating a great meal, partying, or having great sex, do you? Find a way to make your work like that and you'll never worry about it again.

22 points by oscardelben 17y ago

Interesting, and for the most part sounds feasible. But for me, I'd rather check my Inbox than Twitter. And I'd rather people emailed me than called me, since most of the time they'd get a voicemail which I would have to pay to retrieve, and then I'd call them and it wouldn't be convenient, and then ... And while some things (think long discussions) are done better verbally than by email, there's a lot of other things (like Reports from clients, or my global office) for which email is the only alternative to actual mail (since, and again this is for me, the chances of any of them diving into Google Docs or Wikis in the next 3 years is negligible).

jsz0 17y ago

I guess I'm old fashioned. I like e-mail. I like having everything collected together in one spot. I like being able to make one set of filtering/sorting rules. I like being able to segment my communication into work & personal e-mail addresses. It seems to me this strategy simply pushes stuff around to new places. I can't imagine dealing with Twitter, increased telephone call volume, more IMs, etc actually makes things easier but it's a personal choice. Probably depends a lot on what type of people are contacting you and what exactly they want.

jacquesm 17y ago

I work a lot with people in different timezones, email is nicely asynchronous and that is why I think it will be with me for a long long time. I got rid of IM though, that was simply too much of a distraction, so much 'stream of consciousness' because of the too-low barrier that it becomes overwhelming. Email has just the right barrier of entry to me, it is relatively cheap for me to check and a lot of work on the part of the sender. If I'm not interested the cost is near 0, if I'm interested it can go quite far. Also, for anybody in bussiness for themselves not checking email is a limiting move imo, snappy response to email is very much appreciated by customers and collaborators alike.

jedc 17y ago
I completely agree with IM; I avoid it if at all possible. There's too much of a time lag between responses so it seems slow, but because it's live it's very hard to turn my attention away. Email I can at least deal with on my own terms.
unalone 17y ago
I use email the same way I use IM and Facebook. I've heard all three described as time-wasters. I find that ridiculous. Each is a medium designed for a specific thing; each can be abused; each can be a boon if it's used right. Only email the people that you really have to email with, keep everybody else in a junk folder. Block all but the five or six IM names you'd care to have a live conversation with. You'll find it impossible to waste your time.

Torn 17y ago

Except, he hasn't ditched email at all. 6. A few types of emails will get through for now. My filters allow emails for advertisers, interviews, refunds, and people who want to hire me, to get through to my inbox [...] I’m working on automating these processes via the web Even if he 'automates processes via the web' that's still having to spend time to read, process, and deal with text content sent by others. Rather than ditch email, he seems to have put forward a plan for receiving less of it.

derefr 17y ago
> ...having to spend time to read, process, and deal with text content sent by others. Not doing so wouldn't be ditching email, that would be ditching communication.
- Torn 17y ago
  That's completely in-line with my point -- that 'ditching' email isn't necessarily getting rid of the time and effort involved in dealing with others' communication

robryan 17y ago

Twitter also allows more ability to get distracted than the averages persons email inbox. At least with email everything is directed at you.

swaroop 17y ago

So he's giving up one inbox (email) for another (twitter)? It's going to be an interesting experiment because people are not really expected to reply back to every message on Twitter, so will people get ticked off if Leo doesn't reply to tweets? If Leo had instead responded only to really important emails and not every single email, would he have achieved the same results? I hope Leo posts an update on the same two months from now, would like to see if he has indeed got rid of inboxes (irrespective of whether it is email or twitter)

jacquesm 17y ago
I think he's too obsessive about his inbox, whatever it is to make it work. If you can't deal with your email inbox then I don't see how switching to another kind of inbox is going to solve the problem. It's a self discipline issue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with email, if used well. Prioritization would go a long way to getting the problem solved. Stuff that's urgent I take care of when it reaches me, stuff that is to be taken care of goes on the back burner until I have a spare moment, some stuff I never get around to. That's life. It applies to just about everything from maintaining a house to managing your communications.

hbien 17y ago

I wish I got email - that is, instead of phone calls. People still call me for non urgent items, like calling me on the weekend to remind me to do something on Monday. Even worse, phone calls with list of feature requests and bug reports. I'd be so happy if these were all written down in an email - even better if they were entered directly into the bug tracker.

pmichaud 17y ago
You need to stop that. You teach people how to treat you. You've obviously been a bad teacher 8)

extension 17y ago

I'm not a big fan of email but replacing it with a hodge-podge of trendy, proprietary services is a terrible idea. We need to consolidate communication, not fragment it more than it already is coughgooglewavecough.

enneff 17y ago

If a so-called productivity expert has problems with "checking email multiple times a day, of responding over and over throughout the day, deleting spam and unsubscribing from newsletters and unwanted notices, filtering out messages and notifications, deleting those dumb forwarded jokes and chain mails" then they might want to consider a career change. I've been using email for 20 years, and I only receive work-related mail (that I read at appropriate intervals to my workflow), the occasional personal email, and specific automated emails that are filtered to specific folders (where I can give them attention when I need to). I never receive chain mail or stupid jokes, because I don't deal with the type of idiots who send that kind of stuff. Those who did send me that sort of stuff were told in no uncertain terms that I'm not interested in it, and it stopped immediately (this doesn't mean I was nasty about it, though). I almost choked laughing when he said he was ditching email for Twitter. Twitter is possibly the least efficient and reliable Internet-based communications medium. And I say this as someone whose profession is software to make greater sense of that medium. Was this piece meant to be satire? It just seems ridiculous to me.

jrockway 17y ago

I stopped reading after he said he replaced email with Twitter.

pmichaud 17y ago
I saw that coming when I read the headline, but I have to say that at least one thing is really compelling about the switch: people have to be concise. When people have to be concise they put more thought into 1) The communication itself 2) Whether the communication is even necessary That is a positive.
- tetha 17y ago
  On the other hand, you cannot compress all messages into 140 characters. Recently, we had to setup some buildfiles in this university project and after a while, things grew pretty weird, so we started to exchange informations about what I had done, what I thought that meant and so on. There is no way this information would be transmitted better via 28 140-character-twitter messages or something else. In this case, a nice well-formatted email with each step in a paragraph was the best way to communicate this and it worked very well.

tybris 17y ago

I have a 1-2 weeks response time for most things. Works great to limit the stream.

edw519 17y ago

This is exactly the opposite of how I operate. I love email. Why? Because I'm a programmer and I don't want to be interrupted. I like to keep the day-to-day things simple because my work is anything but simple. I use gmail and everyone I know has my gmail address. It has excellent spam filters and it's easy to manage. Best of all, it never bothers me. When I'm ready for a break, I check and manage my email. It takes 5 minutes, just enough time to eat an apple. Family, close friends, and some business associates have my cell phone #. They know not to text me because if I'm working, I will not respond. If I'm not working, the only response they'll get is "ok". If the phone rings, I know it must be important to talk. Usually not for long, then back to work. I do not IM. I do not Twitter. I can't imagine worse ways to ruin productivity. I IM'd for 3 days. I got nothing done, so I emailed everyone to never IM me again. Email me and I'll respond when I'm available. I surf my favorite sites (especially hn) during breaks. When the break is over, on go the headphones and up comes my text editor. See you in an hour or two. Not before then.

unalone 17y ago
Do you use Gmail's chat, perchance? It's a nice way to quickly talk to those folks who use Gmail too. How do you enforce your breaks? I'm still trying to beat some self-discipline into me.
- edw519 17y ago
  I make no distinction between Gmail's chat and any other chat. I don't use them. For 99% of my communication, email is fine. For anything more urgent, I prefer the phone. I don't "enforce breaks". My body lets me know when it's time. My critical path is usually eyestrain, but it could be anything. "I'm still trying to beat some self-discipline into me." Don't. You can't win that battle. Even if you do, it will only be temporary. I look at it completely differently. I absolutely love what I'm doing so much that I have to pull myself away for breaks. Do you love what you're working on? If so, discipline will never be a problem. If not, then why not? Solve that problem and discipline will never be a problem. Either way, discipline is never a problem. Working on the right thing and devouring it is the solution. You don't worry about enforcing discipline when you're eating a great meal, partying, or having great sex, do you? Find a way to make your work like that and you'll never worry about it again.