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August 23, 2006

Declaring e-mail bankruptcy

I just returned from vacation to find my e-mail inbox overloaded. I cleaned it before I left—deleted or filed a couple of hundred messages—but now things are out of control again, to the point where I’m too embarrassed to reveal how many messages are in there. (Some secrets should only be shared with one’s IT guy.)

That’s why I was so interested in a concept described by columnist Lawrence Lessig in the August issue of Wired: “E-mail Bankruptcy.” The idea is that, when you’ve reached the point where there are too many e-mails to deal with, you quit—“erase your debts and turn over a new leaf.”

Mr. Lessig’s method is to collect the e-mail address of everyone you haven’t replied to. “Paste them into the BCC field of a new message you’ll send to yourself. Write a polite note explaining your predicament,” he writes. After apologizing profusely and promising to do better in the future, ask for a re-send of anything particularly pressing. Then, delete all of your messages.

This is such a fascinating concept for personal e-mail management that I’ve got to believe it can be applied to a bankrupt system of e-mail—for example, in an entire organization.

Are people in your organization drowning in e-mail? Are too many electronic bulletins or newsletters being broadcast to large audiences? Do too many people have the right to hit “send all?” Is too much e-mail useless and irrelevant?

Why not start from scratch? Remember the concept “zero-based budgeting?” The idea was that you didn’t take last year’s budget and update it; you took a blank sheet of paper and developed a budget from scratch, questioning the reason behind every possible expenditure.

Do the same thing with e-mail. Put a ban on all e-mails except those that individuals send to each other. Develop strict criteria for when e-mails can be sent to all or large segments of the organization. Insist that e-newsletter or bulletin owners make their case before they can “publish” their messages.

Radical? Sure. But it’s just crazy enough to work.

As for me, right after this, I’m deleting all my e-mails. (Except, of course, yours.)

Posted by Alison Davis at August 23, 2006 03:05 PM