Death of Email?

According to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, in a recent Wired magazine interview, 

Email is about to die!

It's in its final, fatal decline.


You surely feel it should have been taken out and shot a lot time ago! Jensen Group and others' research show that corporate workers can spend up to one-third of their day managing email, and it is one of the things that makes work so complex!







Moskovitz and others claim that the current social media craze is NOT the answer, but they know what is. Social media's focus and purpose is to connect people to people. What is called for, instead, is actually a work graph — which connects the work (tasks, ideas, clients, goals, agenda items... as well as information about that work and how it all fits together.) The people (who's responsible for what, etc.) are subsets of the work itself.



This WILL happen! Sometime very soon you'll be reading about many apps that will do exactly that. But don't hold your breath waiting for email to die a quick death! You'd die first.



Why? Because attitudes of senior executives, corporate IT infrastructures, business practices and embracing new ideas at work moves much slower than the consumer marketplace does. Diversity and empowerment have been corporate priorities for decades, but we still have inequality for women and the desperate need for far greater empowerment. Performance reviews have been a train wreck for decades, yet most of us STILL suffer through them. We STILL have corporate IT wizards suppressing mobile phone abilities from 2009, '10, '11, '12 and '13 because they can't figure out the security issues.



For most of us, email will die a slow and painful death. 

Here's what you can do to get ahead of that change... 

>

1. Put on your BigBoy and BigGirl Pants

You already know the biggest reason that email is such a pain in the ass! YOU! You feel obligated to answer far too much crap! You're not as disciplined as you should be. You feel obligated to zero-out your in-box. STOP IT! NOW! Stop letting your inbox control you!

• Know your top 20 people and your top five priorities and put 80%-90% of your focus on them. Period.

• Ignore a lot more than you do now. If you missed something that's truly important, don't worry: the sender will send it again.

• Repeat the above every minute of every day

> >

2. Use your frickin' filters!

Even Email2009 had all the filters you needed to filter out most of the crap! Use them!

• Know your top 20 people and your top five priorities: Make them High Priority status. There is NO Middle Priority!!! There's only High Priority and "Everybody Else Who I'll Get To ASAP" (And you'll find that 80% of that category should have been deleted anyway. Guaranteed.)  

> > >

3. Know what matters.

Is this what you want on your tombstone? "She zeroed out her inbox every day. She never let her kid's needs get in the way of that." Of course not. Know what matters. Most of what does is NOT in your inbox.

> > > >

4. Shift to Gmail and use killer apps  

Gmail already has most of what you need without Corporate IT's restrictions. Get out of Corp IT Hell. Also try apps like Mailbox to manage email better.

> > > > >

5. Be an early adopter of Work Graph apps   

Moskovitz's vision will surely soon become reality. Multiple apps will compete to be the winner. Don't wait for that eventual winner. Pick one as soon as it comes out. If it doesn't work for you, discard that and try another. What's important is NOT the app, but you training you to build and use different habits. That's the real benefit of being an early adopter.



The punchline...

Change your habits. Now.

Most of the problem with email isn't email. 

The solution is each of us changing our habits, being more disciplined.