The Email Inferno
December 15th, 2004Stage one is configuring your email client to present alerts when you receive an email. Don’t do this. Stage two is configuring your email client to make noise when you receive an email. Don’t do this. Stage three is running your email client all the time. Don’t do this, either. To be effective, you must pick the moments at which you’re going to receive email.
This is why I’ve stopped running my email application 24/7. Although I still check it compulsively (working on that…). For the RSS junkies out there, I think this applies to you too!
Sidenote: Speaking of email, I’m looking for cases of people using SMTP to transport things such as SOAP messages, etc – where the receiver isn’t a human. Leave a comment if you have a good example.