The Danger of Email
The month has officially ended. Just for fun, I did a quick summary of my email traffic during November:
- I received 1,564 emails. That averages 52 per day, 7 days per week.
- There were 279 emails that got stopped in our spam filter.
- I sent 789 emails.
It's amazing how central email communication has become. Twelve years ago all my communication was done by phone, fax and snail mail. Now I don't think I could live without it.
In Simply Strategic Stuff, I wrote about some advantages and disadvantages of email. I also said there are certain times when you should completely avoid email:
"You should avoid email...
- When you are in any type of relational conflict with an individual.
- When you are mad.
- When you don't trust someone, or you think he or she doesn't trust you.
- When you are hurt by something someone just wrote to you.
- When you are writing anything that would not be OK if seen by everyone in your church.
- When your heart is beating hard, your fingers are typing fast, and you know you'll feel vindicated when you finally hit the 'send' button."
It's good advice. I can't say I always follow my own advice 100% of the time, but as I reflect on the past 789 emails, I did pretty well in November.
How'd you do?