Email on it’s way out ?

Who among us does not now regularly feel that the pace of communication and technology adds to stress and makes it sometimes difficult to filter out all the rubbish ?

Despite the huge tech advances in the last decade, the issue of email spam is still a big problem and does email adequately substitute the need for a verbal communication ?

Well, some experts are now predicting that email is gradually becoming less and less important or productive as a communication tool and in fact constitutes a distraction so serious as to damage business (who hasn’t seen a colleague or someone else in a business meeting furtively checking and then typing an email reply on a smartphone ?) and some businesses are even going further, by experimenting with banning email for certain specified days to gauge how their employees respond, whether they feel agitated by being “cut off” or whether in fact they are more focused, present in the moment and therefore more productive.

Research certainly suggests that in some circumstances email can waste time and blur an employee’s focus.

A recent study by business experts ORSE, in conjunction with other data supplied by others claims that :-

• it takes over a minute to get back on task after receiving a spam or irrelevant email which distracts the reader
•  only 11% of 11-19 year olds use emails, instead they prefer instant and more interactive forms of communication such as social media

there are of course dangers in that email for many is a happy medium between the manic short messaging of text or tweets, where the brain can sometimes engage sometime after the fingers, with sometimes devastating bad results, and the old fashioned means of communicating.

What do you think ?