As we reported last week, email is forty years old this month, and despite plenty of challenges from rival forms of messaging, it’s alive, well and still growing. It seems that many of us suffer email overload, so wouldn’t it be good to take a day off? That’s what the organiser of a new ‘No Email Day‘ hopes to persuade us to do.
No Email Day is a campaign that is encouraging people to stop using email completely for twenty-four hours on 11 November 2011 and do something more productive with the time they save instead. Organised by UK-based Paul Lancaster, the idea sprang from his constant, futile fight to reach ‘Inbox Zero‘.
So, how will No Email Day work? Lancaster explains:
“This would involve switching off your email completely (or simply ignoring it) so you can focus completely on your ‘real work’ or ‘art’ that is currently going undone.
“If you do need to contact someone on this day, emails should be strictly off limits – replaced instead by real life, face to face interaction, picking up the phone or perhaps even writing a letter (remember those?) Better still if you can spend time away from work to be inspired and re-connect with the offline world.”
The idea of avoiding email for a day may sound tempting for some, but wouldn’t that make life difficult in the workplace? Lancaster believes that the role of office email is overrated.
“How did people survive and get work done in the past? Could we be even more productive in the workplace without the distractions of email? Admittedly, some would still need their own emails to do their job but many of us could get by with a shared inbox that we all used to send and receive work-related emails.”
So, will you give up email for a day on 11 November? The campaign is centered around its Facebook page, and you can find more information in this presentation. With only 64 Facebook likes at the time of writing, it’s only just getting off the ground, although amongst those ‘likers’ is Seth Godin, the influential marketing expert.
I’d certainly be tempted to give up email for a day, although the following day I’d look all those unread messages in my inbox, feel bad about deleting them and start replying, one by one…
With pleasure (I have the day off!)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeThe 'No Email Day' Story So Far...
• 22,000 views of the 10-page 'manifesto' on Slideshare (over 20,000 in the past 2 wks) - see attached or http://www.slideshare.net/lordlancaster/no-email-day-by-paul-lancaster). • Coverage in The Next Web (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/10/15/no-email-day-wants-you-to-quit-your-inbox-for-24-hours/).
• 1,000’s of Tweets (plus blogs and forum posts) about the campaign from a...ll over the world incl. UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Africa, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile & more! (Follow us @NoEmailDayHQ & share your thoughts by including the hashtag #noemailday in your Tweets).
• Radio interview for the ‘Outriders’ show on BBC Radio 5 Live last Tuesday (download the podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/pods and skip to 13mins 30secs). • Awareness of the campaign and discussion on Google+ with Sarah Price (Gmail Community Manager) at https://plus.google.com/107047796519061210494/posts/Hy7P7TeDSHT#107047796519061210494/posts/Hy7P7TeDSHT
• 2-page spread in The Journal (North East business paper) last Thursday (see http://www.nebusiness.co.uk/business-news/science-and-technology/2011/10/27/could-you-live-without-checking-email-51140-29667734/).
• Brief discussion about ‘No Email Day’ in the recent Wired podcast (around 36mins) (http://www.wired.co.uk/podcast/episode-49)
• Support from leading thinkers at IBM including Luis Suarez (Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist @ IBM) who talked about the campaign during his talk at the ‘IBM Jamcamp’ conference in Frankfurt recently. (Luis has gone almost 4yrs without corporate email(!) by moving conversations outside his Inbox and onto his ‘Power 4’ social media tools of Twitter, Google+ & and an internal IBM social network).
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likei have been watching this campaign unfold with interest- its not a bad idea. However, on twitter the organisers are claiming 20000 people looking at it on slide share. This does not tally with only 150 FB likes. Then i looked on slideshare and 17000 of these hits are from an italian website- this all does not add up. is this real campaign as there are some strange figures? I might get involved, but is this real?
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likechuck44 Yes it's a real campaign. Conversations about it (both positive & negative) are happening both online and offline.
The number of Facebook 'Likes' doesn't tell the full story (we now have 165 'Fans' by the way although Facebook Page Insights show many more people have visited the page).
At the time of writing, the original 10-page 'manifesto' (http://www.slideshare.net/lordlancaster/no-email-day-by-paul-lancaster) has had 20,672 views on Slideshare (19,000 of these since TNW ran this article last Saturday).
Just under 1,000 people have Tweeted about the campaign around the world in countries including the UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Eastern Europe, Russia, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Australia too.
Luis Suarez (Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist @ IBM) talked about the campaign during his talk at the ‘IBM Jamcamp’ conference in Frankfurt on Wednesday. More to come. ;o)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeThis is not a new initiative- it has been going on for as long as email has been around. See for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7049275.stm
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likehoopo The concept is not necessarily new. But the idea of a global 'No Email' day is. Furthermore, we now have numerous tools (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) at our disposal which make this a realistic proposition.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeStop reading e-mail? No way. Stop sending e-mail for one day and use alternatives like phone, chat or visit sounds nicer to me!
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeHi iroetman , we're not hardline about the campaign. Even if you just stop sending email yourself on 11.11.11 and pick up the phone, IM chat or meet people face to face that's something we would encourage.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likeon a work day? no way... second... i have No Email Day every weekend... i dont think we need a day to do this we (people) just need to train themselves to disconnect. once you start this it gets easier to have No Email Weekend all the time.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likethemichaelshane I totally agree- every day off or holiday is No Email Day, so why we need a 'campaign' I have no idea. People who have problems with 'email overload' are probably the same people who dive to answer the phone as soon as it rings. So ignoring email would just bring on another problem anyway. This campaign makes the sweeping judgement we all do something 'creative' in our jobs roles- which we don't. Do I think we'll be seeing no email day in a call centre, financial markets, banking, hotel industry- no of course not!
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likeramannthemichaelshane The idea is to get a global movement of people avoiding email on the same day (11.11.11), so they can spend more time doing their 'real work' instead of just the 'busy work'. No matter what type of job you have, there is always room to be more creative and productive with your time. Worth considering at least. (Please read the 10 page 'manifesto' if you haven't already to get a better understanding of what the campaign is all about.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI have shared this on Facebook and Twitter.
I hope this is going to spread really fast so that the people who normally flood my Inbox with almost-useless and LONG emails can read the NoEmailDay Manifesto ASAP.
Or should I send them the Manifesto today? :-)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likedan_plan Thank you for the support Dan. Please feel free to send people the 'manifesto' to as many people as possible (or at least 1 other person). It doesn't have to be via Email.Telling people through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a Blog on your site, Text, Phone or face-to-face would be even better and would ensure you don't burden people with even more Emails ;o)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeIf a lot of people Like them in Facebook then I will do it .
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeAchraf Almouloudi Why will you only join is lots of people 'Like' our campaign on Facebook? That isn't the only way we are connecting with people.124 people have 'Liked' our Page so far but 743 people are talking about this article & NO EMAIL DAY all over the UK, US, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Nigeria, Egypt, Israel, Eastern Europe, Russia, Philippines, Hong Kong & Australia! (see http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fthenextweb.com%2Finsider%2F2011%2F10%2F15%2Fno-email-day-wants-you-to-quit-your-inbox-for-24-hours%2F).
Furthermore, 6432 people have viewed my 10 page 'manifesto' on Slideshare too (see http://www.slideshare.net/lordlancaster/no-email-day-by-paul-lancaster).
Go on, join the movement!
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeLooks like somebody has been smoking quality shit. lol.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI posted a reply to this on my G+, but I'll post it here too:
Wow.
"This would involve switching off your email completely (or simply ignoring it) so you can focus completely on your ‘real work’ or ‘art’ that is currently going undone."
My "real work" relies on email. It's the fastest way to communicate for almost everything I do. If I stopped using email, a lot of my work would slow down horribly, and I'm definitely not the only one.
"How did people survive and get work done in the past?"
In that case, why don't we get rid of anything that's changed our lifestyle in the past two decades because we used to get along fine without them? Seriously. It's not about whether or not we can survive without it; it's that it completes the task in a quicker way. We don't need email, smartphones, or anything like that; we use them so we can get the tasks we regularly do in a faster manner.
If you didn't notice, I think this is a completely pointless event. It's like the whole Earth Hour thing where everyone turns off their lights for an hour, but when the hour finishes they continue living their lives in a non-environmentally friendly way.
Use the tools you have to make your life more efficient. That's why they're there. Don't misuse or shut them out of your life because you could do without them.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeAnuj Ahooja
It's only for 24hrs! The whole point of this campaign is to get people to at least 'consider' their email usage. It's taken over many people's lives and making them less productive & more stressed. We're not anti-Email per se, but how many people would say that reading, replying, sending, deleting or marking emails as spam was a vital part of their job, yet they spend a huge chunk of their time doing just that. We're asking people to spend less time doing 'Busy Work' and more time doing 'Great Work'. Unlikely that this will involve email.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikePaul LancasterAnuj Ahooja Can you tell me how email has made people LESS productive??? I take it you were not working before email arrived then? I would also love to see an explanation of 'Busy Work' and 'Great Work'.....
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like559 Retweets about this article so far & rising! (See http://twitter.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fthenextweb.com%2Finsider%2F2011%2F10%2F15%2Fno-email-day-wants-you-to-quit-your-inbox-for-24-hours%2F). ps If you'd like to say anything about the campaign on Twitter please use the hashtag #noemailday ;o)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI think this is pretty naive stuff. How on earth do you 'save time' by walking to go and talk to someone (and therefore disturb them), or writing a letter?? I don't think email is the problem at all, it is the user's lack of skill in dealing with communication, some people are just not good at dealing with information and often think they are above the routine aspect of their job role, which almost always means dealing with communication. Inbox Zero- does not exist, all you do it file things in a different place (the digital equiv. of the old paper shuffler) and end up with a huge filing system. Psychologically it might make you feel great- but it shows you place far too much emphasis on how email features in your job. If it stops you being creative- simply manage your time better. The issue is to actually be able to manage your time at work and not think you have to read every single email to the letter and send great big replies- email was not designed to be used like this. All that happens on a day like this is you have double the emails to answer the next day- so does it achieve anything? No.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Likejoe1782You make some good points. We have nothing against email. It's the way people use it that's the problem. I think we've all had days when a barrage of emails go back & forth between 2 or more people which wastes a huge amount of time. In these instances it would be much quicker to have a face to face conversation with someone where all points could be discussed there & then. Please read the short (10 page) 'manifesto' to understand why & what this campaign is all about: http://plandigital.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/no-email-day-by-paul-lancaster.pdf (Paul www.facebook.com/NoEmailDayHQ)
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI see how this could work but I don't think it'll happen. Emails over power social networking, instant messaging and most other ways on online contact.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeHi Jonny Rowntree (& everyone else interested in the campaign). Please read the NO EMAIL DAY 'maniifesto' which explains more http://plandigital.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/no-email-day-by-paul-lancaster.pdf
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeI think that's a lame campaign.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeYep. No biggie.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeNo
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
LikeNo
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like