A Behavioral Economist Tries to Fix Email

I always thought I was a dinosaur (and probably I am one) as I consder e-mail a different form of mail, and since mail is delivered once (or maybe twice) a day, I normally do check e-mails twice a day, typically as soon as I arrive in the office and some half an hour before leaving it (in the evening only replying to really urgent messages, that are rare, all others are replied next morning).

It's somehow refreshing that the people that studied the issues deriving from "continuous update" came to similar conclusions:

>Mark’s ideal system does allow for urgent communications, just not through email. If workers need to contact one another with time-sensitive requests, she says, they’d pick up the phone, send an instant message, or talk in person.

Haha nice, good job he re-invented Gmail filters!

Sarcasm aside, I use filters for like, everything, so that the only email that lands in my inbox is email that's important - and if not, I always proactively filter it out or put it in a "reading" or other label.

However, I'm not as famous as Mr. Ariely!

Still cool research though.

> Now I wish I had snoozing for my text messages...

And I wish I had snooping for my gmail messages disabled...

I'm surprised that people would assume that emails you send would get an immediate response. I'd assume that very important stuff that absolutely can't wait would relayed with an SMS / phone.

I use Thunderbird, have disabled desktop notifications, and check them maybe 3 times a day (once in morning, another time around lunch, and then the 3rd time somtime afternoon). Or if I'm bored and have no more important things to do.

How do you handle something that is urgent? What if there is (just as some examples) a short notice meeting or a person is blocked on what they are doing until they get an answer from you?

At any company I've worked for email basically became the end-all-be-all communication platform, except maybe idle chit-chat amongst small teams (which generally use their own platform).