Thoughts On Email

I was listing to this In Beta episode today while mowing the lawn. Gina and Kevin were talking about email and getting to Inbox Zero and so on. One of their comments was that email fails because it is a TODO list that other people can add items to. This is not the first time I have heard this and I don't know who originally said it, I couldn't find it in quick Google search. They also made a comment about training other people that emailing you does not mean an immediate response is coming.

This comment got me thinking, again, about how I use email at work. I currently have about 71 emails that I feel like I need to respond to. This weighs on me and I can never feel like I am caught up.

This episode got me thinking about sending an automatic response to incoming emails. Something like:

Thank you for your email. If this email contains a task you would like
me to complete, I would appreciate it if you would call me. This would allow
us to properly discuss the task, its schedule, my availability, and
possible alternatives if those items don't line up.

The problem with something like this is that I am an Engineering consultant. We make money by being responsive to clients. The more responsive we can be, the more likely we are to get repeat business and repeat business is the best kind.

I think a good compromise would be to have this response be sent to anyone inside my company but not to our clients.

I am just not sure how my peers and managers would respond to something like this. So much of our business is done over email that this response may appear to be in bad form. I think an argument could be made that a response like this is more honest and will possibly generate more realistic discussions about tasks and schedules than the current alternatives.

I would like to hear any reader's thoughts, especially from those in similar businesses.

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