Anne-Marie Lamonde
Sun
After contemplating the recent Vancouver Sun article regarding the decline in scholarly reading caused by electronic overload, and in recognition of the fact that e-mail behaviour is the No. 1 culprit for creating workplace anxiety, I have listed a few simple steps to lessen the anxiety that comes from being (and being perceived as) continuously “plugged in.”
These steps, in part, retrieve actions that were once taken with snail-mail, and are an attempt to lessen today’s acculturation to the instantaneity of electronic mail.
1. Choose a time for e-mail activity. Select a reasonable time of day to read and respond to e-mail and decide on the amount of time you wish to dedicate to this task (e.g. 7 a.m.-9 a.m.)
2. Save responses to draft. If your time for responding does not fit in during reasonable hours, to avoid filling your colleague’s mailboxes at any hour, save your e-mail in the “draft” folder to be sent the following morning during working hours. This has the added bonus of reviewing responses that may not read right.
3. Limit your e-mails to essential information. Lengthy, fervent thoughts can be saved for the face-to-face human contact usually reserved for meetings either during working hours or over coffee, lunch, or dinner. (Romantic long-distance relationships included.)
4. Be efficient. Write salient points and separate ideas into new paragraphs to allow the reader to scan the e-mail quickly. This allows the reader to prioritize items, i.e. when to respond, and what to respond to (important points vs. interesting points.)
5. Avoid sending urgent e-mails. Matters that require immediate attention are probably best handled in person or over the telephone. This entails fighting the urge to use the “urgent” priority button.
6. Avoid multi-tasking online. Try not to interweave e-mail activity with other online tasks as you will find yourself doubling the time spent on doing each inefficiently.
If you take these steps, but your colleagues do not, you may always smile sweetly when asked, “Did you get my e-mail?” and respond according to step 1, “I don’t check e-mail after 9 a.m.”
I hope these ideas lend themselves to developing your own approach to limiting electronic activities so that you can retrieve the wonderful world of “slow.”
Anne-Marie LaMonde is a doctoral student in the faculty of education at UBC.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
