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Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

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Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#61

Post by tomjen3 »

schizoidboy wrote: post #8

What do people think about using email as an alternative to social networks - i.e. creating lists of email addresses (groups), and sending out photos, jokes, opinions, etc. to those groups (e.g. an "All" group to send life updates, a "Cool" group that can take any joke, etc.)?

I would tell you to use Google plus instead. I dislike any group email because it is too cheap. Blast fifty people a message that is going to take longer for them to read than it took you to write it?

And joke emails? Seriously I'd anybody wants a joke, they can Google that. No good reason to interrupt others.

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#62

Post by rpgmaker »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #45
stegosaurus wrote: post #15

I actually wish e-mail were used more. I want my relatives, my spouse, my friends to use e-mail. I'm not quite sure how to convince them, though. It generally feels like they'd rather use Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever's in fashion at the moment. Any tips? Do I just have to sign up to all of the different chat apps and write bots to forward them to me or something?

Delete your Facebook. There are a more benefits than being able to email; you'll stop pretending to be friends with those kids from high school, don't see your ex's new life, and you can get drunk with your friends without your aunt knowing.

> and you can get drunk with your friends without your aunt knowing.

Unless your friends are on facebook. If that's the case then there's some second-hand facebooking/instagramming that you have to be aware of.

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#63

Post by rpgmaker »

gammaflow wrote: post #55
Sophistifunk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delete your Facebook. There are a more benefits than being able to email; you'll stop pretending to be friends with those kids from high school, don't see your ex's new life, and you can get drunk with your friends without your aunt knowing.

I would do this but sadly I was dumb enough to use it with OAuth in numerous places

Why is this a problem?

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#64

Post by [deleted] »

Puts wrote: post #58

The reason nothing has replaced email yet, even tough it's an old and clonky protocol is because it's an open standard and people don't make standards any more. Today you make services (most often based on HTTP because it's a protocol any 20yr old junior programmer can handle) that are locked in, harvesting has much data about it's users as possible desperately hoping that it could monetize on this data one day.

[deleted]

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#65

Post by huuu »

rpgmaker wrote: post #62
Sophistifunk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delete your Facebook. There are a more benefits than being able to email; you'll stop pretending to be friends with those kids from high school, don't see your ex's new life, and you can get drunk with your friends without your aunt knowing.

> and you can get drunk with your friends without your aunt knowing. Unless your friends are on facebook. If that's the case then there's some second-hand facebooking/instagramming that you have to be aware of.

Real friends don't care if you are on Facebook or not.

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#66

Post by FussyZeus »

Puts wrote: post #58

The reason nothing has replaced email yet, even tough it's an old and clonky protocol is because it's an open standard and people don't make standards any more. Today you make services (most often based on HTTP because it's a protocol any 20yr old junior programmer can handle) that are locked in, harvesting has much data about it's users as possible desperately hoping that it could monetize on this data one day.

And don't forget when the company can't monetize data well enough (because the only people making money on this garbage are the ones with 20% of the global populace) the company goes away, if you're lucky gives you a way to archive your whatever or fetch it via an API, after which you either are locked into the Shiny And New service that everybody likes because it's shiny and new, or have a massive XML/text/zip file full of garbage you know you're never going to take the time to sort, and rinse and repeat.

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#67

Post by infinite8s »

huuu wrote: post #65
rpgmaker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you can get drunk with your friends without your aunt knowing. Unless your friends are on facebook. If that's the case then there's some second-hand facebooking/instagramming that you have to be aware of.

Real friends don't care if you are on Facebook or not.

I think he meant that evidence of your drinking might still show up on Facebook, especially if those photos are tagged with your name.

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#68

Post by pferde »

ryandrake wrote: post #37

I'm one of those "zero inbox" people. To me, an E-mail sitting in my inbox is a distraction-- a task I potentially have to do today. My system is pretty simple: I skim through each one. If it looks like something I have to do or respond to today, I give it a red flag. If it looks like something I have to do or respond to tomorrow, I give it an orange flag. If it's a multi-person thread wherein I'm waiting for more in…

A suggestion from someone who uses a similar system: get rid of yellow flags, and simply move those emails to whatever archive folder the "completed" emails would go to. A task where you're waiting for input from someone else is a task for that someone else, not for you. As such, it has no place in your inbox.

All in all, using inbox as a TODO list has been a great arrangement for me - both at work and privately.

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#69

Post by hashmp »

kirykl wrote: post #4

What I despise most the is the desk drop in, especially for things that could be easily emailed. Sometimes even interrupting me to alert me in person that you've sent me an email. However I've been told by a manager to use the desk drop in more, to get more visibility and make it look like I'm engaging with the team to outside observers

This is interesting, as I sometimes do this. I don't like just writing an email requesting something and flinging it off to someone without talking to them in person. I put everything I need into an email. I'll then pop over just to say hey and explain. I guess I do this with people I don't usually communicate with.

Surely face to face contact is a good thing?

Re: Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At

#70

Post by pferde »

CydeWeys wrote: post #18

I've been using Inbox for Gmail ( https://inbox.google.com ) since launch and it handles most of the things the author talks about. Emails are treated as tasks, and it's a single mouse click or keyboard shortcut to do any of the following: create a reminder based on a given email, pin it for easier later retrieval, or archive it. That's basically how I manage my mail, along with a simple trick from "Getting Things Do…

Careful about those "quick tasks", you might die a death from thousand cuts. If you're doing something that takes time and concentration, it takes effort to context-switch your brain away from it, do the "quick task", and then context-switch back. If you keep getting distracted from the "big task", chances are that you will start making mistakes, or just do it badly. It's better to defer these "quick tasks", and then do them all at once - thus minimizing the context-switching from and to your "big task".

Just tell people that you'll get on their task "[in an hour/later today/today until lunch/...]", AND THEN REALLY DO IT, like an adult, responsible person. No touchy-feely patronizing nonsense about forgetting the tasks you defer, we're not schoolchildren.

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