Anderson’s Email Charter Puts Onus on Sender
So I cut out this commentary on Sunday from The Washington Post by Chris Anderson, the one who is the curator of the TED Conference, not the editor of Wired (and not Chris Andersen, who has the most tattoos of any NBA player). In the paper it’s headlined, “Do you really need to send that email?” Online it’s “How to stop email overload? Think before you hit send.” (Interesting topic for another day about the differences.)
What’s funny is that I read the piece, nodded my head and then in the last two days continued on my merry way of doing what he advises not to do: sending loads of emails. Anderson believes that email volume is drowning us, as soon as we first log on in the morning. “In the blink of an eye, my day’s priorities have been commandeered. And more missives keep pouring in, including tweets, Google Plus notifications, Facebook status updates and instant messages. It’s essentially a fire hose of information all day long.”
He describes an email inbox as a to-do list that anyone in the world can add to. And that this has to stop. “Why is e-mail volume getting ever worse? I believe it’s because of a simple fact: email is easier to create than to respond to. This seems counterintuitive—after all, it’s quicker to read than to write. But reading a message is just the start. It may contain a hard-to-answer question such as “What are your thoughts on this?” [I have been guilty of this, but thankfully, SIPA members are incredible about responding and sharing.] Or a link to a Web page. Or an attachment. And it may be copied to a dozen other people [I don’t do that], all of whom will soon chime in with their own comments. Every hour spent writing and sending messages consumes more than an hour of the combined attention of the various recipients. And so, without meaning to, we’re all creating a growing problem for one another.”
It’s a strong commentary. Acknowledging that checking our email is a new form of procrastination, he suggests that sending an open-ended email can be an “excuse to not think through a problem.” That perhaps we are passing on our share of the thought process to someone else. Maybe we should think harder, pick up the phone or walk across the office. Anderson wants you to slow down a bit and think the situation over.
So he and his colleague Jane Wulf drafted an Email Charter to try to get people to adapt to new rules. Their 10 points all encourage email senders to go easier on the responders. Don’t expect an immediate answer. Don’t be put off by short answers. Use descriptive subject lines. Avoid funny fonts and colors. “Slash Surplus cc’s. Celebrate clarity.” And think about if that email really needs to be sent.
“I have [a] colleague who, while wonderful, was in the habit of sending chatty e-mails consisting of long paragraphs and open-ended questions,” he writes. “Then one day she sent a message that consisted of one crisp, informative paragraph, ending with a note that she’d read the charter. The e-mail’s final line was ‘NNTR: No need to respond.’ I burst into a smile.”
Like any strong words, Anderson’s pleas may be a bit extreme. My knowledge and experience on some of SIPA’s most important topics pales to those of many of our members. So reaching out to them has often educated me and allowed me to present valuable information to the SIPA community. So I am grateful to members taking that time. But, Anderson definitely strikes a sensible chord. All he asks really is that we put a little more thought into it.
“The irony,” he writes, “is that the best way to achieve that will be through e-mail. If people who like the charter add it to their e-mail signatures, word will spread. One line works: ‘Save our inboxes! Adopt the Email Charter!’ It’s short and to the point, just like e-mail should be.”
Your serve.
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