Tomorrow (Friday 11/11/11) is No Email Day, a campaign to encourage people to stop using email for 24 hours for greater productivity and to realize how email has become abused/overused. Can you stand the withdrawal symptoms?
No Email Day is billed as a way to ‘be more productive with your time’ and, as its manifesto makes clear, stems from the frustration of an over-crowded inbox. Set up by digital innovator Paul Lancaster, the ‘No Email Day’ is not a plan to go back to old-fashioned forms of communications. Indeed, it is an attempt to move FORWARD into newer forms of communication, such as social media, to increase greater collaboration and productivity. Paul Lancaster states, “Managing your email can be a massive time suck.”
The No Email Day manifesto at http://www.slideshare.net/lordlancaster/no-email-day-by-paul-lancaster suggests switching off your email completely to help you get inspired and focus on your real work—for just one day. To take part, leave your inbox unchecked for 24 hours on Friday, 11 November.
To find out more, view the manifesto on Slideshare or follow the comments on Twitter @NoEmailDayHQ and via #noemailday hashtag. No Email Day also has a Facebook page on which people can talk about the campaign and share useful resources and tips on better email management and productivity.
As for me, I won't be using email much as I will be traveling much of the day. I almost always have access to email when traveling, thanks to mobile devices. However, I probably won't have much time to check new messages.
I'm not so sure that a No Email Day is a good thing. For most casual conversations with distant people, I prefer email over the traditional forms of communication, namely letters and telephone calls. I find social networking to almost always be a waste of time. I still prefer email as my primary communications channel for most everyone except friends and family. For those who are close to me, nothing beats face-to-face communications although the telephone is a rather good substitute. I would never recommend abolishing email altogether, but I also suffer from email overload. I'd love to find methods of making email more efficient.
How about you? Can you go 24 hours without email? Or are you as addicted as the rest of us?
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