Overwhelmed by Email? One Firm Goes Email-Free on Fridays

Tue Oct 9, 2007 3:57PM EDT

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I'm sure you know the feeling: You spend five minutes answering one email, only to find that a dozen more have taken its place while you were crafting your response. During business hours, email can be a vicious cycle that never stops, to the point where some are taking drastic steps to get out from under its crushing weight.

The latest idea: Email-free Friday, which a group of engineers at Intel are kicking off in an attempt to stem the tide of electronic noise. The idea isn't just to get people away from Outlook for the day, but to get them interacting more in person or even over the phone, hopefully to encourage better idea generation and more effective problem solving than the coldness of email can offer.

There may also be a secondary benefit of stopping people from sending so much email on the other days of the week: One company says that, after implementing an email-free Friday plan in early 2006, overall messages sent within the company have dropped by a whopping 75 percent. That's incredible.

Sounds like a great start. As a companion, can I humbly suggest a telephone-free Thursday? 

Here are some additional personal tips on getting more control over your inbox:

  • Don't check your inbox so often. I tweaked Outlook to check for new messages once ever 10 minutes instead of every 2 or 3 to help eliminate distractions from other tasks. Some heavy mail users check once or twice an hour. You aren't going to miss anything, I promise.
  • Delete or file messages you're done with. Some people just leave everything in their inbox, from critical tasks to newsletters to spam... and I have no idea how this "system" could possibly function. Create folders for related messages you want to save, and delete the rest. Invest in a spam filter. Most experts say that you should aim for a maxmum of 10 to 20 messages in your inbox at any one time. I personally feel a great sense of accomplishment when I am able to delete or file an email permanently.
  • Use a calendar to help you. There's no need to leave a message in your inbox for months to remind you to do something in January. Set an appointment in your calendar and file away the message until you actually need it.
  • Use appropriate subject lines. Or change them if someone sends you a "keeper" with a vague heading. Seeing "Project due on Friday 10/19" will be much more helpful than a subject line that reads "Hey..."
  • Don't forget the phone, IM, or even a walk down the hall. If it will take you longer to type it than it will to discuss in person, consider getting up out of your seat. The walk will do you good, and they might have candy in their office.

Comments on Overwhelmed by Email? One Firm Goes Email-Free on Fridays

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  • 66 Posted by tainoprhc on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:54PM EDT Report Abuse

    As grimmy as some co-workers can be you have to send emails. It's your only form of back-up or proof to the conversation. So many times I've spoken to a co-worker on the phone or face to face to only have them say to me a few days later. You never asked me for that. Or I must've overlooked your email. Emails have gotten me out of hot water several times.

  • 67 Posted by tthai24 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:23PM EDT Report Abuse

    Email-free any day is a great concept, in theory. However, in this fast-pace, technology-driven world we live in today, this restriction is only a burden. This concept *could* work with in-house co-workers and customers. Face-to-face would be timely and costly with customers and co-workers outside of your immediate office building .. especially those out of your time zone. I agree with "zenwhisky". The following business day(s) would just be insane. We tried this at my organization. It failed miserably and was dropped after a 1-month trail.

  • 68 Posted by paul_dunnington on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:03PM EDT Report Abuse

    If you think that us Europeans don't use email then come and sit at my desk for a day ! What a stupid thing to say, email doesn't recognise borders it is a global communications medium. Yes it is sometimes easier to walk a few yards to a work mates desk or office or even to a different building if the reason is to enable a conclusion to be reached rather than the bouncing of emails between you. It also provides excercise and human interaction. Email is great if you work with people on a national or international level as face to face meetings are difficult to arrange not to mention expensive and email is very efficient - providing it is used correctly.

  • 70 Posted by bxsxj8 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:15PM EDT Report Abuse

    if you set up a rule to send EVERYTHING to your DELETED ITEMS you won't have to worry about those pesky emails!

  • 71 Posted by seafordmx on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:10PM EDT Report Abuse

    I have Sarbanes Oxley responsibilities that require me to email information to certain people on a daily basis, and my company has decided that all communication regarding these activities be done via email no matter how minor it is, so that all correspondence is trackable. They won't let let me pick up the phone anymore because of this. Thank you Enron.

  • 72 Posted by sduren36 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:10PM EDT Report Abuse

    Finally, America is slowly waking up to how evolving technology is encroaching upon human to human contact.

  • 73 Posted by mgmilian on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:17PM EDT Report Abuse

    I'm glad this works for our Engineers at Intel, but for a service industry like ours (we are a Travel Management Company), this brilliant idea is out of the question!

  • 74 Posted by sduren36 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:10PM EDT Report Abuse

    Finally, America is slowly waking up to how evolving technology is encroaching upon human to human contact.

  • 75 Posted by truthfulblkwoman1 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:23PM EDT Report Abuse

    I wholeHEARTEDLY agree with some face-to-face! I love email, text-messaging, blogs and all of that but we truly live in a world of non-verbal communcation. So many can hide behind a voice mail, email, text or IM and never know their colleagues! Let's get back to the days before Caller ID, before "online personnas" and before learning about the world by clicking a button: does anyone remember an Encyclopedia!?

  • 76 Posted by pete2plus on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:07PM EDT Report Abuse

    Also, I've already heard the "it will never work", "it will cost us so much money". Not true at all. Truly awesome. I'm sure there are exceptions but for the majority of people not wanting to to do it is just that. They just dont want to do it.

  • 77 Posted by rageninew on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:27PM EDT Report Abuse

    "The walk will do you good, and they might have candy in their office." Yeah, walk and then eat sugar. That's a good point! R-TARD!

  • 78 Posted by coolree_baby on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:29PM EDT Report Abuse

    I think it's a great idea. People have such bad communication skills these days because they rely on e-mail so much. An e-mail message can be taken in the wrong context as the tone of the message is not there for a person to understand. I believe Intel is promoting a better relationship between its staff members, suppliers and customers. If you do have a bad memory, do a brief type up / memo of your phone call to a person if it's really that important! To be honest your only without e-mail for about 8 hrs, it's not a life time! If you cant handle your work load without the use of e-mail, you really need to look at your own communication skills!

  • 79 Posted by ewilsonswkr on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:57PM EDT Report Abuse

    When the use of emails first started, the hospital where I worked decided that emails would help reduce the amount of paper used for inter- and intra-departmental memos, etc. Many of us were resistant to this policy because of the time it took to read and respond, when our work load was already overwhelming. It got to the point that it was reflected on our performance evaluations if we didn't look at our emails at least twice a day. It became an all consuming task to keep up with the barrage of emails, and the time it took to manage them took even more time away from the rest of our job responsibilities.

  • 80 Posted by nathalie_arts on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:34PM EDT Report Abuse

    Agreed with everyone saying they would rather answer emails than talk on the phone. I, for one, despise talking on the phone. That is why I do not work as a clerk/receptionist, but as a web support person. I hate having to decode people's voice mail, especially when they do not know how to pronounce their name properly, do not leave a name, cannot pronounce their phone number or area code, or the reason why they are calling. They then call you the next time and complain: "Why didn't you call me back????" Um, because you did not leave your phone number? If I miss one day of work, I get a hundred emails more the next day to work on - worse when you get to the weekend and come back on Monday. Hello people, that is what happens when you have a thing called a "website"; anyone from anywhere in the world at any time of day or night will email your company. Even if you have a 1-800 number, I can guarantee you than someone out of the coutry will email you instead of calling, especially if they are not proeficient in your language (besides, it's so much easier to understand someone in their writing than their talking). My guess is this E-mail Free Friday thing is for those businesses/employees who don't deal with websites and just email themselves back and forth all day? Hey Bob, let's go have lunch today. Good idea, where do you want to go? Um I don't know..hold on, the boss is coming. Besides, I also like to cover myself by saving all my emails, especially when some of your co-workers are not computer literate. "Why didn't you reply to this person? They called complaining they did not receive an answer and it has been a week they wrote" "*checks emails* Um, this email was intended for you so I sent you this email a week ago on the same day the person emailed. Did you answer it yet?" "*goes and checks emails* Oh, yes, you are right. I guess I missed this one. I will go and reply now" Burn.

  • 81 Posted by garrypcrystal on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:06PM EDT Report Abuse

    Broznec your full of it. I live in Europe and all of my work is done by email...maybe its just you and people are like, oh no its brozonec...as for email..no one should ever work on Fridays or Mondays..i mean, why would you???

  • 82 Posted by helen6925@sbcglobal.net on Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:49AM EDT Report Abuse

    It is about time all these computer nuts were stopped from clogging ones personal mail box. It is like going home and checking your mail box and low and behold there are a ton of advertisements clogging the box. Whatever happened to ones freedom? Because some company pays a ton of money to the government, we the people are paying the price.

  • 83 Posted by ladybolds on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:55PM EDT Report Abuse

    I would love for my job to institute this. No one interacts with each other in person, everything they do is by email. And do I even have to mention the out of hand cc's. So not only do you get one email, but when everyone else starts replying to that email, it can go on forever.

  • 84 Posted by alfredkao2001 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:50PM EDT Report Abuse

    I think this is dumb. Some clients don't want to be bothered by face to face or phone calls. Emails are good - plus it's a legal, legitimate paper trail. My firm uses email as a written, "paper" trail when working with clients. I use it as a good way to reach out to clients, leads, prospects. Not all of them like phone calls or voicemails. If you are talking about being spam free, then that's different.

  • 85 Posted by bigislandratz on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:07PM EDT Report Abuse

    great idea - I will place it right behind no longer wearing a watch and only scheduling meetings in the afternoon after 2 o'clock so that you don't lose productive customer or system time. You'd be surprised how short meetings become if you schedule them one hour before someone's quitting time. If you think Europe is slow, try living in the Pacific Islands where time totally stands still.

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