When the digital revolution happened, email was right at the heart of it. For the first time, mass communication was available in real-time and with very little effort.
Over thirty years later, our relationship with email has changed very little and this can mean all sorts of problems when we now operate in a world where digital communication in general has advanced so rapidly.
The problem with email
There are two types of communication: synchronous and asynchronous.
- Synchronous is communication in real-time, like a telephone call. One person says something and you respond instantly. They then reply to you straight away … and so the communication continues
- Asynchronous communication is not real-time. It’s communication that is meant to sit there for a while until the user responds at a later date.
Email was designed to be asynchronous, but too many people are expecting it to be (or are turning into) synchronous communication.
You see, email has that nasty habit of becoming the most important thing in the room. It tends to be one of only a handful of apps that are open all day which meant for me that from the moment the ‘ping’ sounded and the notification showed up in the top right-hand corner of my desktop (or a nice big red number showed up above the email icon on my phone), I was distracted from my work.