This came up in a workshop yesterday so I am sharing it today. There will be a time in the future for a longer set of posts on how engineers and other humans can cope with email, but now is not the time.
So instead, I recommend reading ‘A World Without Email’, by Cal Newport*. I have even considered making reading this book as a prerequisite for entering into new collaborations.
There is some irony in writing about a world without email on a blog post that is summarised in a weekly email digest. But ultimately it comes down to intentional communication design.
Hopefully, if you signed up to this list, you did so with the intention of hearing from me (and you can change your settings here). But the problem with email and other forms of instant communication is how easy it is to fall into unintentional communication.
Dealing with unintentional communication, and the sense of overwhelm it can cause us, feels important because if we are overwhelmed, we have haven’t got space to think. If we can’t think, we don’t have the capacity to imagine a thriving future. And if we can’t imagine it, it makes it much harder to build it.
*Newport, C. (2021) A world without email: reimagining work in an age of communication overload. London: Penguin Business.