Your Emails: A Challenge

It's Friday afternoon, between three and five, and all of a sudden, your inbox is going berserk with emails. It happens every Friday, and it happens to you because all of the people you know are cleaning off their desks and covering their behinds because the weekend needs to be “GUILT FREE." What a silly practice! And I might say, it's somewhat disrespectful to you and your time. 

Email can be a great tool. It can save time, allow important documents to be easily sent and used in a timely fashion, and overall increase the speed of business. Email can increase your productivity, improve collaboration on a project, confirm appointments, etc. It was designed for positive and favorable use in a high-speed world. But like anything else, we abuse and take advantage of it.

One of the negative effects is glaring, and it hurts us. People hide behind email. They send the email and consider the task complete. They copy all these people on the email and assume everyone reads the same email at the same time. We have stopped actually talking directly to our customers, our fellow team members, our partners, and ourselves. We all use email on our phones, and we're always flippantly typing away. It's caused us to lose the “personal touch." It’s like an invisible disease because not only do we choose to be faceless, but we are now voiceless. 

No need to talk to anyone; we have email. No need to hear someone’s voice; we have email. The most important gift we have is our voices. We can speak; we can sing; we can express joy or sadness, all in our voice. However, we are hiding our voices by using email.

I have a challenge for everyone: close email down for a week and start talking. Before you pass out from email withdrawal, give it a try. I’m sure you will have to email something during the week, but let your voice be heard. I can guarantee you that your work will still be done efficiently, but it will be exceptionally more personal.

When Friday at 3PM rolls around, call someone.