These days I find myself again helplessly staring at hundreds of unopened envelopes deposited in my mailbox daily. There is no magic about receiving these letters. Gone is the anticipation, along with the paper smell, personal handwriting and stamps from far away. About the only thing that still remains is the stress from my inability to promptly respond to all these people writing to me.
The sad part of our modern electronic world is that we all contribute to this tragedy of commons, where commons is the time and attention of the people receiving mail. We find it easy to send an electronic letter, we don't even need to buy a stamp any more. We shamelessly deposit our unorganized thoughts, verbose sentences, unfiltered emotions - often poorly packaged, behind obscure subject lines - in front of others.
For the most part, we don't consider the price our recipients are paying to process our communication. Consider, when you and I receive an email. Even when we don't respond, we spend precious time as we have to notice new email, switch over from whatever we were doing, scan the subject line, often open and scan the content, close or delete it, before switching back to our original task.
If you are interested in more thoughts on this subject consider "How to get better at email: What science tells us" - a recent write up on Quartz.
The sad part of our modern electronic world is that we all contribute to this tragedy of commons, where commons is the time and attention of the people receiving mail. We find it easy to send an electronic letter, we don't even need to buy a stamp any more. We shamelessly deposit our unorganized thoughts, verbose sentences, unfiltered emotions - often poorly packaged, behind obscure subject lines - in front of others.
For the most part, we don't consider the price our recipients are paying to process our communication. Consider, when you and I receive an email. Even when we don't respond, we spend precious time as we have to notice new email, switch over from whatever we were doing, scan the subject line, often open and scan the content, close or delete it, before switching back to our original task.
If you are interested in more thoughts on this subject consider "How to get better at email: What science tells us" - a recent write up on Quartz.
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