How to choose: Email, voice mail, or carrier pigeon?
Ayende posted how he has some 80+ unread and starred email messages waiting for him after a busy workweek. Reading this reminded me of a situation I ran into in the mid-1990s, while working in the IT group for a multinational bank. I went away for a little over a week, and I came back to find over 200 unread messages in my inbox. (This was before Blackberries and ubiquitous webmail.) Reading through some 200 emails would have taken quite some time (even longer considering they used Lotus Notes), so I decided to take an alternate approach: I deleted them all. Did I commit a grave error, deleting that all-important urgent email from a busy executive who needed to communicate something important to me? No, I did not. If something was that important, it would have been communicated to me via voice mail, or would have been redirected to one of my coworkers. Granted, this may not be the best approach in all situations, but it illustrates some things we must recognize in a modern world. • Do
