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The article below is a great statement of a
subtle lack of Netiquette. There are email users who are proud of their
lack of Netiquette. This should not be a source of pride. There are
other items beside the large inbox, which is the focus of the article.
These include short emails, lack of any grammar and little formatting.
Resist the temptation of Netiquette the faux pas, your readers will be happy!
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On
The Count Of Three, Let's All Stop Comparing Our Unread Email Count
Call it a symptom of
the "busy-bragging" epidemic -- we love to tell people how #stressed
we are.
Katherine Brooks from
thehuffingtonpost.com
Posted: 09/16/2015 12:23 PM EDT | Edited: 09/18/2015 02:22 PM EDT
"I have at least 300 unread emails in my
inbox right now," an acquaintance of mine bemoaned over a glass of wine
last week. I shuddered, imagining how bothered I'd be by that amount of
unchecked surplus, and reached for the bottle.
"Really? Last time
I checked I was in the thousands," another friend countered, upping the
ante pretty abruptly. "I know someone with literally 50,000 plus," somebody else cooed.
All of a sudden, I felt a real urge to spit out
a bigger number. Why? Because I sensed we were competing for something. That
little -- or rather, enormous -- number situated to the right of my envelope
icon was taking on new meaning. To these people, to my friends, unread emails
didn't symbolize being disorganized or incompetent. They symbolized being needed.
They symbolized being in demand. They symbolized being important. They were, in
effect, like a badge of honor.
But wait. A few months ago, the Internet was agog with anecdotes
about inbox shame. There are two kinds of people in this world, a meme purported: those who maintain inbox level zero and
those who let the unread emails mount to ridiculous heights. More than a few
writersconfirmed the power of this viral dichotomy.
Approximately half of us compulsively delete, sort and filter, taking pleasure
in being in the gmail equivalent of the black, they said. The other half watch
as the numbers rise, checking only the emails they deem necessary, letting the
others fester like an open wound.
The Atlantic's Joe
Pinsker likened this curious meme to Muppet Theory, Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick's "Sesame
Street" version of chaos theory. "Every one of us is either a Chaos
Muppet or an Order Muppet," Lithwick claimed. While Order Muppets
"tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises," their
cousins, Chaos Muppets, are "out-of-control, emotional,
volatile." Check the phone of a Chaos Muppet like Gonzo and you're
likely to find unread emails abounding.
Writer Anna Breslaw took it further. "There
are 'the 0 unread emails people,' and 'the 13,000 unread emails people,'"
she reiterated in Elle, creating a system in which the "0 unread"
people get to look down on the "13,000 unread" people. "This
implies, obviously, that the 13k people are disorganized, forgetful, and easily
overwhelmed," she added. This characterization, like Lithwick's indictment
of the Chaos Muppet, is not kind.
Hence, the feeling of inbox shame.
Except, the "13,000 unread" are revolting. The
"13,000 unread" no longer feel shame for their email neglect;
instead, they feel pride. They are actually competing for who can reach a
higher number of unread emails. Thirteen thousand? Pshaw. I have a colleague
who boasts 87,006 unchecked bits of correspondence as of publication of this
piece. A quick Twitter search surpassed even that.
Cultural commentators, though quick to sing the
praises of the "0 unread" on the surface, have begun to come to the
aid of the "13,000."
You see, keeping our inboxes clean involves a
lot of multitasking, flitting from one duty (like, writing this article) to
another (habitually checking my email every five minutes) with varying degrees
of attention.
"Trying to do too
many things at once makes people aggressive, impulsive and less sharp,"Sophie McBain wrote in The New Statesman. She cites research
from neuroscientist David Levitin, "which suggests that simply noticing
there’s a new email in your inbox while trying to concentrate on a different
task reduces your IQ by 10 points." Ouch.
"When someone drops everything just to get
an unread count back to zero, productivity might be taking a hit," Pinsker
emphasized. "The appeal of these behaviors lies in the illusion of
progress that they foster," he added later. "Few tasks have a sense
of conclusion as neat and immediate as archiving or deleting an email. For that
reason, neurotically tidy people like me can't help but triage emails the
moment they arrive."
Well, the Chaos
Muppets have taken note. They are no longer ashamed of their indecorously
messy email accounts. They are proud. A stack of unread emails means there are
people out there who need your reply. A stack of unread emails means you're
virtuously overworked. Call it a symptom of the "busy-bragging" epidemic. We love to tell people how #stressed we
are, because it reveals some semblance of our status in the professional world.
And unread emails represent an easy and quantifiable method of measuring that
stress.
When I pressed my colleague -- who is certainly
not your typical braggadocious type -- about her unread email queue, she said
that her 87,006 number was a dark symbol of her inability to become organized.
But then she added: "Sometimes I will brag [about it] in a party trick
kind of way though."
What are we to do about this new trend of workplace swagger? Just
as we grow tired of hearing our peers boast about their stress, I propose we
side-eye any attempts to faux-complain about our unread email trove. The next
time someone grumbles about their thousands of unkempt emails, resist the urge
to compete. Continue sipping your wine and take refuge in the fact that we're
all just Muppets trying to make our way in this Muppet world.
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======================================================= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw&__scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618 ============================================== Special Bulletin - My just released book, You're Hired. Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...) is now on sales at Amazon.com================================================**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions: www.tabularosa.net In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at: www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo. I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications.
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