Contract Worker - Freelancing Experiences

Why You Shouldn’t Declare Email Bankruptcy

by Rico on May 31st, 2007

An article on The Washington Post talks about Email bankruptcy, when someone decides they simply can’t handle all the emails waiting in their inbox. Declaring email bankruptcy is as easy as two steps:

1. Delete all pending messages
2. Blast an email to all your contacts explaining that you’re starting from scratch, and that they should resend all important messages.

At first glance, declaring email bankruptcy seems the perfect way out of your email deluge. You get to clear out everything and being with a clean slate. Ultimately, however, email bankruptcy is just a stop-gap solution, since it:

1. Provides only short-term relief. Merlin Mann makes a good point: “A one-time erasure of communication debt would give temporary relief, but the basic challenge remains; the net number of requests for my attention exceeds my ability to provide that attention by at least an order of magnitude.” In short, if no meaningful changes are made to your email management, you’ll just end up where you began.
2. Violates basic decency. You’ve asked people to contact you through email. And now, you’re suddenly declaring that you won’t reply to their messages—which they took time to compose—and that they have to resend it. What kind of impression does that leave?
3. Can be replaced with a change of habits. Like I said, meaningful solutions are needed for lasting change. Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about what you can do to make your email barrage more manageable, without having to give up completely.

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POSTED IN: Ramblings of a Freelancer, Ways to Work Faster