Climbing the virtual mountain
Back from holiday to the usual virtual mountain in the Outlook inbox – a quick scan through to see what is really urgent and what can wait.
And as with most e-mail communication these days only 10% really need attention, the rest are cc’s for information, non-urgent messages and, despite a fairly ruthless spam filter, a number of junk e-mails which get consigned straight to the Deleted Items folder.
No voicemails and no faxes and surprisingly little post – just brings home how far we have moved on in recent years.
I recall a long discussion a number of years ago with my father-in-law (who had just retired from a lifelong career for one of the regional electricity companies) trying to explain how we didn’t use the telex machine anymore (although it did sit in the corner and would occasionally start chattering away like a demented typewriter) and how everything was now done by fax, a technology that he found hard to imagine.
Goodness knows what he would think of e-mail and online web-conferencing and the like! It’s become a critical part of our lives but how important it is that we stay in control of our inbox and not the other way round.
Undoubtedly it does facilitate easy, swift communication – particularly highlighted in a Sale/Purchase transaction where I am involved at the moment where marked-up drafts seem to arrive from the lawyers by the minute demanding attention – but I’ve learnt that I need to become more disciplined in dealing with e-mails otherwise the day can be hijacked by that “Unopened Messages” icon in the bottom left hand corner!
So what else has been happening while I’ve been away?
