The strange allure (and false hope) of email bankruptcy
May 31st, 2007
Merlin Mann at 43 Folders:
A one-time erasure of communication debt would give temporary relief, but the basic challenge remains; the net number of requests for my attention exceed my ability to provide that attention by at least an order of magnitude. And the disparity around my ability to thoughtfully respond to my pile may be ten or more times worse still. The scale is insanely out of whack.
The emails that bog me down are the personal updates from friends. I’ve got a love-hate relationship with these emails. On one hand I really want to stay connected with friends that I’ve made that now live scattered across the country (and world). But I don’t want to just fire back a list of things we’ve done since we last talked, I also want to give an honest sense of how we’ve been doing. And that takes an emotional energy, that after a long day at work, I just don’t feel I have to give. And so the list of emails to respond to grows, raising the barrier I feel I have to overcome the next time I think about responding to my email.
For things like bill-due date reminders and online purchase confirmation I love the quick and easy medium of email. And I do like how much easier it is to keep in touch with friends and family. But on the other hand, with more people to keep in touch with, my bandwidth becomes the limiting factor.
I’ve noticed an interesting difference between snail mail and email. When I open my mailbox downstairs, I’m delighted to get a personal letter from a friend, but I groan at the amount of junk mail I have to toss in the recycling bin. But with email it seems to be the other way around. Junk mail goes right to my spam folder, and even the automatic notifications from Bank of America or Blockbuster are no problem: just a quick read and I move on. But with email it’s almost like I dread getting another email from a friend that I know is going to require my personal time and attention to respond.
I know that sounds really bad to say that I dread getting email from friends, but more often than not it’s the honest truth. Perhaps that’s just the reality of living in this technological age.
By the way, I found this article via a link from Daring Fireball, a blog I read regularly. You can read the entire post here.
