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PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com

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Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#11

Post by Swizec »

csallen wrote: post #3

For all the talk about email overload, I'm surprised more people don't do stuff like this. It's simple and effective. Instead, everyone wants an AI solution that automatically separates the important from the fluff. I hate to be a pessimist, but I'm doubtful we'll produce a notable success in this area any time soon, if ever. Priority Inbox certainly isn't it. I spent so much time double-checking its often-wrong resu…

Priority inbox works wonderfully for me. I practically never check anything other than priority inbox anymore.

The way it deals with your scenario of meeting somebody new and then getting an email from them is that any email sent directly to you from a new person is marked as important.

The way it deals with your second scenario is machine learning. Everyone's priority inbox behaves differently depending on how you train it.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#12

Post by tomjen3 »

jerrya wrote: post #6

I would like to know what percentage of people that set up the standard vacation message ("on vacation, getting back on this day, for emergency contact Jane") DO delete messages they get on vacation, and what percentage read them but perhaps when they get back from vacation.

What about those who just scan the email subject and only read those that matter? Heck that is what I do even when I am not coming home from a holiday.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#13

Post by csallen »

Legion wrote: post #9

Interesting idea, but I highly dislike it. The entire point of email is that it is the "leave a message and I'll get back to you" mode of communication for the Internet. It is not the "respond right now" mode - that is what IM and chat rooms and other real-time communications are. I have things to do too, you know, and keeping track of someone else's schedule in order to be able to send them an email isn't on the lis…

> The whole point of email is that I can send on my schedule, and you can read it on yours.

A major cause of email overload is that senders don't respect the "you can read it on yours" part of that statement. Instead, they send emails requesting info that they need to act on within a specific window of time (usually hours or days). This implicitly assigns recipients a time limit, because responding too late would be considered rude. If you're receiving 500+ emails a day that expect a prompt response, you don't stand a chance.

Communication works both ways. If you can't be bothered to take my schedule into account, then don't contact me. Complaining about this is akin to complaining about someone having a secretary.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#15

Post by Too »

darklajid wrote: post #5

Loved the idea _until_ that 'urgent' loophole. I'd have gone the whole way here, there's no (real..) reason for 'urgent' mails during vacation.

Hehe, yeah, it would have been more logical to only keep the messages that DON'T have the urgent-subject :P

Is there a standard convention for "keep-as-later-reference"-subject?

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#16

Post by MichaelApproved »

Isn't the bigger problem that he gets about 5,000 emails in the first place? Maybe he was exadurting but I'm sure he gets more than his fair share and that's too much while on vacation but I bet he gets too much email while on the clock too.

I think he need an overall change in how many people email him and how he handles email while not on vacation as well as vacation. Deleting emails seems like a short term solution.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#17

Post by kahawe »

Well, if you are in a position where YOU can pick your clients and/or your employer, this might sound like an interesting or at least unique idea... but if you are just like the rest of us, you will probably have a hell of a lot more vacation coming your way by the time you are back. Unpaid, that is.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#18

Post by jwallaceparker »

csallen wrote: post #13
Legion wrote: post #9

Interesting idea, but I highly dislike it. The entire point of email is that it is the "leave a message and I'll get back to you" mode of communication for the Internet. It is not the "respond right now" mode - that is what IM and chat rooms and other real-time communications are. I have things to do too, you know, and keeping track of someone else's schedule in order to be able to send them an email isn't on the lis…

> The whole point of email is that I can send on my schedule, and you can read it on yours. A major cause of email overload is that senders don't respect the "you can read it on yours" part of that statement. Instead, they send emails requesting info that they need to act on within a specific window of time (usually hours or days). This implicitly assigns recipients a time limit, because responding too late would be…

>> This implicitly assigns recipients a time limit, because responding too late would be considered rude. If you're receiving 500+ emails a day that expect a prompt response, you don't stand a chance.

This issue is addressed with a standard "Out of Office" response.

The difference here is that Dave is making everyone who emailed him wait until some future date to re-send any non-urgent message.

It significantly reduces the workload for Dave but increases the workload for others.

I'd be curious to hear the reaction of people who emailed him and had to wait to re-send their message.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#19

Post by pwaring »

Legion wrote: post #9

Interesting idea, but I highly dislike it. The entire point of email is that it is the "leave a message and I'll get back to you" mode of communication for the Internet. It is not the "respond right now" mode - that is what IM and chat rooms and other real-time communications are. I have things to do too, you know, and keeping track of someone else's schedule in order to be able to send them an email isn't on the lis…

Not only are you being forced onto his schedule, but unless you've read his blog post you won't even know what his schedule is.

If I go away on holiday, I reserve a few hours of my first work day when I get back to scanning through email and working out when I'm going to reply. It seems to work reasonably well - occasionally I'll get someone who didn't know I was away grumbling about a late reply but a quick apology usually satisfies them.

As a sysadmin who ends up getting a lot of autoresponder messages (e.g. in response to emails sent from a website, or from mailing lists) they are an unbelievably irritating 'feature' which I wish had never been invented - although most of the annoyance is down to the fact that the vast majority of autoresponders don't seem to remember whether you've already sent them a message, so they reply every time.

Re: PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your message—really

#20

Post by hartror »

pwaring wrote: post #19
Legion wrote: post #9

Interesting idea, but I highly dislike it. The entire point of email is that it is the "leave a message and I'll get back to you" mode of communication for the Internet. It is not the "respond right now" mode - that is what IM and chat rooms and other real-time communications are. I have things to do too, you know, and keeping track of someone else's schedule in order to be able to send them an email isn't on the lis…

Not only are you being forced onto his schedule, but unless you've read his blog post you won't even know what his schedule is. If I go away on holiday, I reserve a few hours of my first work day when I get back to scanning through email and working out when I'm going to reply. It seems to work reasonably well - occasionally I'll get someone who didn't know I was away grumbling about a late reply but a quick apology…

I think this is a copy of an auto response and it has the schedule in it?
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