Note that I rarely access the jeremy.cooperstock at mcgill dot ca address that McGill's exchange server for some reasons offers as a default. Please do not send anything important to that address.
"I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990,
when I no longer had an email address."
-
Donald Knuth
Through 2008, I received approximately 14,000 email messages after SPAM-filtering had removed most of the junk. Since most messages arrive on weekdays, this translates to somewhere around 50 emails per weekday. Liberally estimating 15-20 of these as announcements, automated output (e.g., cron jobs), and unfiltered SPAM, this leaves approximately 25-30 legitimate messages that request some action, often requiring a response. As of January 2009, this surged to 50 messages per day. In a typical uninterrupted session, each email message I send takes an average of 10 minutes of my time. You can do the math.
Although I do not share their first name, I have been inspired by two great scientists -- Donald Knuth and Don Norman -- both of whom have managed to free themselves from the yoke of email. While these men are priviledged to have administrative support who handle their electronic communications, many computer professionals, such as myself, who read and respond to our own email, find ourselves spending an inordinate proportion of our time dealing with this task. For some, email becomes an all-day activity, in which the "beep" of every incoming message interrupts one's current work, demanding immediate attention, as the recipient has, by now, come to expect a reply within a matter of minutes.
It is all too common to find computer users at conferences lining up outside Internet cafes, desparately waiting for a fix -- not of caffeine but of a new batch of email. In the evenings, rather than relaxing with our friends and family, many of us need to "sign on" to check if there's anything needing our immediate attention. What is wrong with us?
No doubt, there's a wide body of literature from contemporary sociologists who explore the myriad facets of our email addiction. If I had some spare time, I would have read some of this work by now, probably on-line! While it is easy to relate to the stress of a steadily growing "inbox" and the fear that the world will collapse if we don't respond to every one of those messages within some unspecified "email ettiquette" time limit, I for one, am saying "enough." I suggest that it is time for us to reclaim control of our lives from intrusive technology and the obvious starting point for me is email. As such, I provide here, my email policy:
Last updated on 1 February 2009
by Jeremy Cooperstock