E-Mail: A Communication Asset or Deficit?

E-mail has changed the way we work, communicate and live – all within just the last couple of years. Yet, very few of us stop to think about times when we should not use e-mail.

“Would you carry a violin in a damp knapsack? Would you wrap your fiance’s birthday present in used cheesecloth? Would you mail your grandmother’s stemware in a paper bag?” That’s how Send: The Essential Guide to E-mail for Office and Home, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, begins.

When I heard about the book, my first thoughts were: “I use e-mail all the time. I understand ‘netiquette.’ There’s nothing else I need to know about e-mail.”

I hope my significant other reads this column, because he’ll be happy to know that somewhere in print I am going to admit…I was wrong. Some of the stories in the book were interesting and surprising, and the authors made me stop and think. I’d like to share some of the key points as they apply to the kitchen and bath industry.

Time Efficiency

Everyone thinks e-mail is fast, so it must be efficient. But before you pat yourself on the back for using e-mail to be more efficient at work, ask yourself how often you check your e-mail during the day. Do you constantly stop what you’re doing and check your inbox?

I recently realized that I do just that. I’d constantly be putting the task at hand on hold to check my e-mail. It was a huge time drain because I was breaking my rhythm and concentration. So I made a conscious decision that, from now on, I would only check my e-mail a couple of times a day. I must say, it’s much more efficient.

I bring this up because, as the book says about e-mail, “We’re using it and overusing it and misusing it. E-mail is afflicted by the curse of the new.” E-mail is so simple, I think we’re all failing to stop to think about it. My goal for you by the end of this page is to get you to think about how efficiently you’re using e-mail.

I know what you’re thinking…you’re a reasonable person, you’re intelligent, this column still can’t possibly apply to you. Yet, due to the fact that e-mail is such a new communications medium, are you making mistakes you’re just not aware of?
I’m a big letter writer. My letters always have at least one sticker on the envelope, I love to buy fun stamps and I normally only use white envelopes for people I’m not really fond of. (Even my business envelopes are green!) The person receiving the sticker-laden envelope visually perceives a friendly message due to the brightness and fun on the outside of the envelope. Just via a glance, they know there’s a pretty slim chance that there’s going to be a bill or anything negative inside that envelope. Hence, they’re immediately receiving a visual clue from the sender.

E-mail doesn’t allow for that. As a result, right off the bat, it puts both the sender and the receiver at a disadvantage.

E-mail also can be easily misinterpreted. As the book points out, even our voices convey a message. A one-line sentence via e-mail that you wrote to be funny could easily not be perceived as funny by the reader. That poses a danger when you’re communicating for business. Yet, if that same sentence was delivered verbally, the lilt of your voice, the look on your face, all the visual and audio clues make it clear that the sentence is meant to be funny.

E-mail is basically void of any visual or audible cues, which puts us at a disadvantage when communicating anything beyond strictly factual information. If we’re not careful, the lack of cues can lead to misinterpretation and a communication break down.

Time Delay

E-mail also provides instant communication – or instant gratification – and while there are definite benefits to this, there are also risks that come with this. Have you ever sent an angry e-mail and instantly regretted it? You then spend the rest of the day putting together a list in your head of why you have a right to be angry and say what you said. The book points out that when we used snail mail as our mainstay of communication, we’d write a letter and in that cooling down period of time – while we waited for the mailman – it was very easy to pull the letter out of the mailbox and never, ever send it. But with
e-mail, once we hit that send button, well, our anger and hurtful words are engraved in stone.