Jason Clarke

You may have noticed a theme recently on this blog – I’m extremely interested the business and social implications of the increase in email we’re all dealing with. As I read some extremely smart people’s takes on how to deal with email, it’s becoming clear to me that there are two philosophies that do not necessarily peacefully co-exist. It’s a gross oversimplification, but I’ll call them the “Deleters” and the “Responders”.

In a recent post I made reference to a great article by Michael Hyatt where he gives what he believes is the best single piece of advice he can give in the business world. His advice is to be responsive. I agree wholeheartedly with this idea – cultivating a reputation for being responsive certainly will help you advance your career. It’s something other people may consciously recognize, or they may only detect it unconsciously, but in both cases it still has a strong effect on how others see you.

The difficulty I’m having is that while I wholeheartedly agree with this perspective, I also agree with the growing number of people extolling the virtues of the Delete key when processing your email. Merlin Mann is running a simply fantastic series of email-related articles at 43 Folders with the intent of trying to educate people about how to gain back time in their day by deciding what can be safely ignored in their inbox. Burgeoning productivity guru Steve Pavlina touches on the same subject in a recent post about Conscious Procrastination, where he describes that he has made a conscious decision not to let email run his life, and therefore simply cannot deal with everything that comes his way.

The problem with this, of course, is that to truly cultivate a reputation of responsiveness we must decide to whom it is important that we are responsive, and be perfectly consistent. And that is no simple task.

Much like Merlin or Steve I would consider myself something of an email guru, and yet I struggle with this problem regularly as well. I guess I’m just not done formulating my strategy for handling this relatively new social pressure.

I can’t finish this post without borrowing a witty little poem Steve Pavlina wrote about this very issue:

Here lies John, who passed away
While answering his email one day.
No friend, no child, no loving mate
Could keep poor John from working late.
With each new mail, he worked like hell
To click ”reply” instead of “del.”
A prompt response he’d always give
But somehow he forgot to live.

Do you have thoughts on how to dial back the flow of information coming at us, so that we can truly be responsive to the important stuff?