These words might sound a little funny coming from me. Yes I am someone who checks his email tens of times everyday (according to the 4 hour week; I’m wasting a lot of valuable time doing so!). And I do carry a smart phone to make sure I do not miss a single email. But don’t get me wrong; I do not hate email because it is taking over my life. I hate email because as easy it is to use, it is not always the best way to communicate. I can not tell you how many times I told Ayat I would love to stop everyone in invesp from using email (or chat for that matter!).
It is not immediate: Email can be one of the worst ways to communicate when thing need to get the job done right away, You send the email and can only hope that the recipient checked his email and that he already started working on the task. How many times did you hear the excuse, “Woops! I didn’t check my email”. Or even worse, how about when your email lands in the spam folder? Chris sends me his guest blogs regularly and although he is in contact list, outlook insists on putting Chris’s email in the spam folder. Sorry Chris, my outlook has a mind of its own!
It does not build a relationship: I communicate with other bloggers via email regularly. However when I want to take the relationship to the next level, a phone call is the way to go. I smiled when I read Dawud Miracle wrote that we should forget email and pick up the phone.
There is more to communication than words: I remember reading that the value of communication is effected 70% by body language, 20% by the tone of the voice and only 10% by the actual words used to communicate. With email, you completely lose the body language and tone of voice factors. That means that your communication is only at 10% effectiveness! How many times did you send an email that was completely misunderstood, did not communicate exactly what you wanted, or was taken out of context?
Things can go bad real quickly with email: My first project fresh out of college was with a government client. The work was a lot of fun and challenging. However, there was a huge cultural difference between the consulting company I worked for and the government agency. One way or another, the technical teams flamed each other via email on regular basis. These angry emails did not help the relationship with the client at all. Whether angry emails come back to hunt or not, I follow the 24 hour rule before sending an angry email (the cooling off period).
80% of the emails I receive are useless: And I am not talking about all the spam we receive. How many of the regular emails you receive are a must read? I also discovered that most of the time sends me an email with a title urgent, it is most likely urgent for them and not for me.
So, here it is. These are the reasons I hate email. So, tell me why do you hate email? Yes, I am implying that everyone does ![]()
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