For an Easier Life, Dump Your Email?

Want to make life easier and improve your people skills at least 25%?

Dump your email.

Or change how you use it.

Use email in a very specific, defined way.

Think about how you use email in your day-to-day interactions with people. Email is great, but it is a way of interacting with people without interacting with people. Did you get that? Information gets exchanged but that is about it.

It is an exchange of information. Period.

Sure, you probably should check your email once in a while.

Want to make your interactions with others more personal? Move up your level of communication and make it more personal. Move from email to phone or face-to-face. Pick up the phone, walk down the hall or meet for coffee.

My point is that more personal communications leads to an easier life.

I just had a situation with a local entrepreneur offering a great workshop. We talked on the phone twice and really hit it off. Then I emailed him a couple suggestions and he flipped out (and kicked me out of the workshop!). I learned, looking back on it, that I should have handled the situation with a phone call.

Email was too impersonal and distant. It allowed the person to do something they probably wouldn't have done had I called. Oh well.

I think no matter how advanced technology gets, nothing will replace face-to-face communication. Psychologists know that somewhere between 75% to 90% of communication is nonverbal consisting of posture, tone of voice, eye contact, etc. The rest is verbal.

With email you lose 75-90% of your communication. Yes, I know you can put little smiley faces in your email, but come on. Who really likes those things anyway? They drive me up the wall sometimes.

How much time during your workday do you spend managing your email? Spam comes at us in exponentially increasing amounts. How long does it take to delete all that? What if you delete something you thought was spam, but was really important?

I've been in that situation, intensely looking through my spam folder for that email I need for the meeting coming up later in the day. That sucks dirt.

I was in a committee meeting last week and this situation came up. Some important files were emailed to a committee member who deleted them saying "sometimes I delete all my spam and may miss a file or two." This is not acceptable. By the way, it wasn't me.

How much time do you spend reading email? I'm guilty of sitting at my computer and hitting the refresh button while waiting for an important email. Have you done this? What is so earth shattering that it can't wait half a day? What if you just checked your email twice a day at specific times? Would this make you more efficient? I'm getting off the track a bit, but you get the idea.

Life will be easier if you simply interact with people more often.

Clifford Stoll wrote a couple interesting books. His first book was Cuckoo's Egg, which reads as a good cyber thriller. In the book he tracks down a computer hacker. In almost a 180-degree turn around he wrote Silicon Snake Oil. Stoll discusses how the Internet and computers keep people isolated and put distance between people. His advice was to unplug your computer and go out and interact with real people. Good advice personally and professionally.

Bottom line point: Think about how you use email and whether it makes your life easier or not.

Next action step: Stop checking your email so often. Get out of the office and meet people.

Jeffrey A. Betman, Ph.D. is a psychologist, author, and life coach helping people toward the easy life. For a FREE newsletter ($197 value) on making your life easier and FREE report titled 5 Steps To An Easy Life That You Probably Know, But Don't Do Yet, go to www.LifeIsEasyCoaching.com/sq