Email and the decline of intentional communication

The Email Illusion: Why Productivity Is More Than Just Sending Messages Trapped in the Inbox Do you feel like you’re always racing against your inbox? At 8:00 PM, after a day of meetings, you tackle emails. The more you respond, the more messages flood in. You close your laptop drained—not because you accomplished something meaningful. According to McKinsey, the average professional spends 11 hours a week managing emails—over a quarter of the workweek. That’s time consumed by tasks that may feel urgent but often lack importance. Imagine what you could achieve if even half of that time were redirected to strategic thinking, creativity, or meaningful collaboration. Clearing our inbox feels productive, but is this cycle keeping us busy at the cost of meaningful work? The Hidden Costs of Constant Connection Email overload wastes time and drains focus and creativity. Employees check email every six minutes, fragmenting focus and causing fatigue. Email crowds out deep work—the kind that drives innovation. Cal Newport’s Deep Work highlights how shallow tasks like email limit deep thinking. Rushing through emails increases mistakes. A Ponemon Institute study found email-related errors account for 26% of data breaches, showing how haste can have serious consequences. The Illusion of Busyness Organizations perpetuate the “email illusion,” equating busyness with success. Fast responses and full inboxes are mistaken for productivity. A leader clearing their inbox each morning may neglect priorities. This culture values activity over impact, eroding engagement. As Peter Drucker reminds us, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Breaking Free from the Email Cycle Escaping the email trap starts with redefining productivity. It’s not about sending more emails but communicating with clarity and intention. Leaders should model thoughtful practices, use tools like Microsoft Teams for updates, and protect time for deep work. Organizations can adopt “no-email” hours to prioritize focus over responsiveness. By cultivating a culture where outcomes—not busyness—define success, leaders empower their teams to work smarter. Reclaiming the Power of Focus For individuals, managing email begins with boundaries. Instead of reacting to notifications, check your inbox at set times—morning, midday, and afternoon. Pause before hitting “send” and ask: Is this email necessary, or could a conversation be better? Use tools like filters and AI to reduce distractions. These changes help you reclaim time and focus on what matters. Time for What Matters Ultimately, email is a tool—not a measure of success. Productivity is about meaningful contributions, not inbox zero. Shifting focus to impact reclaims energy and purpose. “It is not enough to be busy. The question is: what are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau Perhaps it’s time to reflect on that—not just to redefine work, but to reclaim what matters in our lives. #Focus

One of tech's biggest goals is also its greatest issue - "make everything frictionless" Quick thought experiment, imagine if neuralink or another brain chip could make communication frictionless. Imagine if you didn't even have to pause before speaking but your thoughts just came out as a constant uninterrupted stream. I'm hoping you're thinking this is horrific, I certainly wouldn't want this. Yet starting with email this is the journey that unintentional use of tech is taking us down. Pre-email you'd have to walk down a corridor to talk to a colleague and might find out they weren't there. That's effort or friction - you had to make sure the question was worth it, most of the time it wasn't. Post email, teams, slack, social... you have a question for a colleague and its fine to just blurt it out. It doesn't matter if the question is important or not, the cost to sending is so low and it clears your mental space. Think (optional), type, send... Now of course we're not at neuralink yet, but AI is further reducing the friction. Automated meeting actions, those fleeting ideas that came up in a meeting and were previously forgotten are now committed as actions. Progress? No, not unless our approach to tech changes. I increasingly believe the most important thing that leadership can do is to re-introduce friction into organisations. Pause points to reflect, breathe, assess priorities and focus on intentional activities. Making things frictionless can be a good thing, it can make progress faster and that is good if it is progress we're intending to make. But making a system frictionless without having clarity on intent will only result in noise and burnout ... the classic metaphor of spinning wheels could not be more apt for many organisations right now. Thoughts? Am I on to something or have I gone off on one as I come back to LinkedIn? Intentional replies only please :-)

I received a two-word email reply last week: "Sounds good." I felt frustrated since I put so much effort into a detailed proposal. And their "efficient" response came across as dismissive. Was it intentional? Of course not. But it’s one of the traps of digital communication. It may take away what makes us human. No eye contact, no tone, no body language. Just words on a screen that we interpret through our biases. Three things I learned about email: Short isn't always smart. When someone sends you three paragraphs, a two-word response feels like a slap. Tone is invisible until it's not. I re-read my emails before sending and ask: "Would I want to receive this?" Most importantly: email is not for everything. I have been lately experimenting with audio messages, when appropriate, and it gives a “human touch” back 😉 When was the last time you picked up the phone (or sent an audio) instead of sending another email?

This book recently caught my attention. I have been fighting a losing battle against mounting emails. Since last year, I have started to set an out-of-office reply to all senders that I would most likely be unable to read their email and respond to them. Emails - the powerful enabler of the knowledge worker driving the knowledge economy is now killing our productivity. Emails has morphed into the "tyranny of the inbox," hijacking our attention and hindering deep work. This constant barrage creates a state he calls the "Hyper Active Hive Mind," where we flit from one message to another, never truly focusing. We've become reactive, not proactive: Emails dictate our workflow, pulling us away from planned priorities. Our ability to focus is a valuable resource, and email depletes it rapidly. Newport offers a path forward. He proposes a framework called "attention capital theory" that emphasizes protecting our ability to focus on meaningful work. Our society, which has been fast to adopt emails and instant messaging as the norm to knowledge work, needs to work out new workflow innovations that optimises our cognitive power for what truly matters. https://lnkd.in/gDK2YDCE