Monday, January 20, 2014

Email Isn't the Problem

"Email is a tyrant. Combined with Personal Kanban, it can be a great way to receive work." [the broken link was removed] - Jim Benson

I find there are plenty of times when email is a great tool (for example: providing background material in advance of discussions). Yes, often email is misused and there are plenty of bad processes around email. But it isn't very sensible to say we shouldn't use a hammer (email) because when we use it to cut paper it isn't very useful. We shouldn't misuse a tool; that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the tool properly.

Yes, fix the problems with how emails is used and how you integrate email into your daily work etc. But I think way too often people think email (the "tool") is the problem when I rarely see it that way.

Killing Email Interruptions: Personal Kanban using LeanKit, Gmail, and Zapier [the broken link was removed] provides details on a way to manage the process of dealing with email.

Related: Process Thinking, Process Email Addresses - Effective Communication is Explicit

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