Finally! TED curator, Chris Anderson has put into writing what I hear people grumbling about all day long — and, yes, that includes me: “Stop the e-mail madness, please!” Thanks to Anderson’s Email Charter we can now point to a standard of practice for e-mail etiquette. (You know you’re guilty too.)
Anderson’s charter points out the 10 biggest e-mail abuses, and he offers suggestions for changing behaviors that are so obvious it’s kind of silly we really needed someone to slap our hands. The Email Charter is a step in helping each and every one of us with getting out of our own e-mail spiral. Check out the rules, put them into practice, and thank Chris Anderson — I’m going to hand-write, hand-stamp, and mail him a personal note.
The Email Charter’s rule number 10 is “Disconnect!” This might be the toughest discipline. Most of us have made the attempt and failed. Artist, Steve Lambert has an idea to combat our uncontrollable urge to check email. His project idea on Kickstarter is called Self Control. It’s an OS X application that turns your email off for the time you designate, and once you start the clock, there’s no turning back until time’s up. Now that’s going cold-turkey; can you handle it? [KR]
