A World Without Email – Year 2, Week 8 (A Moment of Weakness)

Back again into another week at work, on what promises to be a rather intense, but short, one (Seeing that Easter is just around the corner), here is that time again where I get to share with you folks over here some further details on the progress report from my new reality of "A World Without Email".

This time around from Year 2, Week 8, where there have been some really shocking updates, at least, from the perspective of the follow up challenge I established at the beginning of the year. I am not very happy with the whole situation, but, before I go further, here is a snap shot of what the report looks like for last week, so you can see where I am coming from with this discontent:

Goodness!! Yes, that was, indeed, my first reaction after I finished adding up all of the different emails I have received last week at work: 47!! The highest number of emails since I got started with the follow up challenge on 20 emails, or less, a week from the beginning of the second year. So last week didn’t look good! Don’t you think? No, not good at all! I know! In fact, it’s been the week with the highest number of incoming emails since beginning of the year! I guess it’s not bad since that’s already over two months, but still not very happy with the whole situation.

Why? Because for both Monday and Tuesday the main reason why I got such a high number of incoming emails was just … myself! Yes, yours truly! And that’s why I am not very happy about it. It was me, and a moment of weakness, by which I allowed those emails to come through my way with some lovely (NOT!!) "Reply To All" ones, as well as offering my email address to receive information I knew I could have gotten from somewhere else in the first place, but decided to go ahead with it anyway. After all, it is just another email! *beep* No, it is not! It’s when you lose control of your Inbox. Once again!

It was that moment of weakness, where I gave in just a tiny bit, that showed me again what it was like not having the control of my own productivity; of seeing emails flocking my way in an unstoppable way, because I told folks it was ok; of seeing how plenty of people thought they could get away with sending just that one more email (Which, in the end turned out to be quite a few!); of feeling that if I give in, people will not change their habits, even if they know there are better ways of sharing information and collaborating with other peers; of experiencing corporate spam first hand as well as that Diogenes Syndrome that Cristina Castro put together rather nicely under "Y el síndrome de Diógenes llegó al ordenador" (Article in Spanish) when stating that our Inboxes are those places where we collect the garbage and we don’t seem to be able to get out of the loop. Or even want to get out of it!

Yes, indeed, that’s how it felt throughout last week! Not pretty, I know! In fact, I realised that it is probably a good thing for me to have such weeks every so often, because they would be a constant reminder that there is plenty of work to get done still! And, most importantly, they will be an incentive for me to keep me going; to keep persevering; to show people there is a better way; to demonstrate you can be as productive as ever, if not more!, using social software tools vs. traditional ones like email while still respecting each other’s productivity; to finally shake the ground strong and hard enough that it will provoke a change of habits in how people connect, reach out and collaborate with others!

Thus last week will mark the beginning. The beginning of something really exciting that I am hoping to be able to share during the course of this week, because today it has started pretty similar to last week, and I surely wouldn’t want to make a habit out of it! So in an upcoming blog post I’m going to be sharing with everyone a new strategy I have thought about which I am going to implement and be as strict as I possibly can to make it work. It is not going to be pretty; it will probably get a few folks upset; it may be even getting me into trouble; but one thing I know is that if I don’t do something about it now, it will be too late! I will be going back to square one and that’s something I mentioned a long while ago I am not going to do again any time soon. The waters are lovely right where I am.

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Weakness, Giving up, Giving in, Diogenes Syndrome, Cristina Castro, El Pais, Collecting Garbage