The Day the E-Mail Dies
Some people dream of a world without war or disease. Jeremy Burton dreams of a world without e-mail.
Like most office workers who sit in front of a computer all day, Mr. Burton noticed recently that he was spending more and more time simply going through his e-mail. But as a vice president of marketing at a big Silicon Valley company, Mr. Burton was in a position to do something about it.
And what he did, others just dream of doing.
Two months ago, he decreed that Fridays in his department would henceforth be e-mail free. The 240 people who work for Mr. Burton got the word: If they wanted to get a message to a colleague in the department on a Friday, they'd have to pick up the phone and call him or her, or, better yet, go over and chat in person.
Mr. Burton meant business, too: violators would be fined.
"E-mail is supposed to be this big productivity tool," Mr. Burton says. "But it's getting to the point where it is out of control."
E-mail, of course, has many advantages: It can cut down on meetings and phone calls, leave a written record of decisions and allow people in different time zones to stay in touch more readily. It's also easy to send -- though because of that fact there is a lot of it.
The number of daily e-mails in North America has tripled since 1999, to 11.9 billion, according to IDC, a Framingham, Mass., research firm. That figure doesn't include spam e-mails, which are another problem entirely.
All these messages, of course, take time to read. The ePolicy Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, consulting firm, says 48% of all office workers spend one to two hours a day on e-mail. Some 10% spend more than half the day on the stuff.
Mr. Burton's company, Veritas Software Corp., makes products that help companies back up, or safely store, their computer data -- including their e-mails. The idea for the no-mail crusade came to Mr. Burton earlier this year during a trip to the company's London office, where he noticed a colleague's in box contained fewer than 10 messages.
Mr. Burton, by contrast, was spending up to two hours a day dealing with the 400 or so daily messages he received, many of them copies of notes sent to others, heads-up notices and other bits of electronic chaff.
His London colleague told him, "The more you send, the more you get," Mr. Burton recalls. It was then that he decided to try his little experiment.
The ban, he decided, would apply only to communications within the Veritas marketing department; people could continue to send Friday e-mails to other departments as well as the outside world. Violators would pay a $1 dollar fine for each proscribed e-mail they were caught sending, with the money going to charity.
The announcement of the ban was made, naturally, in an e-mail. (One, in fact, marked "High Importance.") "Now, this doesn't mean we can all goof off on Fridays," Mr. Burton wrote, presumably for the benefit of those workers for whom e-mailing had become synonymous with working.
The immediate effect of Mr. Burton's e-mail announcement was to set off a deluge of new e-mails, with employees asking each other if the message was for real.
It was. June 25 was the first e-mail-free Friday. Gallows humor prevailed that morning, as workers kept scurrying up to Mr. Burton's office to see who the first transgressor would be.
It turned out to be Michael Parker, a product marketing manager who, at 11 minutes after midnight the night before, had sent an e-mail about a product launch to a marketing colleague.
"I was human and I was weak," says Mr. Parker.
He was forced to pay a dollar fine. And since an example had to be set, Mr. Parker's photograph was posted in the department, and he was forced to walk the halls with a scarlet "E" emblazoned across his chest.
Other employees were nabbed sending e-mails that first day too. Many served up excuses of the "Dog ate my homework" variety. One person said it appeared he had sent an e-mail on Friday only because the clock on his computer was wrong.
As the weeks passed, though, employees got used to the ban, and managed to get their work done despite it.
They phoned. They talked. And they walked.
The marketing department is spread out in different buildings at the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus, and employees needed to adjust to the intradepartmental treks.
Corporate marketing director Dana Loof, for example, normally strolled no farther than the cafeteria for lunch; as a self-described "fashionista," she was thus able to indulge her taste for elegant heeled shoes. But with the e-mail ban, she found herself hiking nearly three miles every Friday. Since the heels hurt too much, Ms. Loof swapped them for a pair of functional, if gauche, gym shoes.
Sometimes, employees forgot about the ban despite making their best effort to heed it. Julie Parrish, Veritas's senior director of channel marketing, put yellow Post-It stickers all over her desk to remind her of the Friday rule. One Friday, though, she forgot what day it was, and went merrily e-mailing along. She had sent out 65 messages before realizing her mistake.
Rather than force her to pay $65, Mr. Burton commuted her sentence to $20.
Jeff Hausman's group of nine marketing employees, as a way of getting around the prohibition, began using instant-messaging software, which allows computer users to text-chat with each other in real time; it's a kind of e-mail light.
But the messaging technology violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the e-mail ban, and it was discouraged. "They were trying to get their fix through another electronic communication messenger," said Mr. Hausman, a group marketing manager in product marketing.
Many of Mr. Burton's workers say e-mail is a kind of addiction, and that giving it up was harder than they thought. Mr. Parker went so far as to find a 12-step-style buddy to help restrain him whenever he felt the urge to press the "Send" button.
The weekly ban, says Mr. Burton, has been a success, and he plans to continue it indefinitely. For one thing, the e-mail in his own in box has been cut in half those days. Not only does he gets his work done more quickly, his office is less cluttered because there are fewer e-mail printouts taking up space.
Other employees say there are other benefits. Art director Jeff Rennacker says that dealing with someone face to face eliminates the confusion and ambiguity of a poorly constructed e-mail; as a result, projects get done more quickly.
As for the e-mail violators' fund, it's nearing $70. The kitty continues to grow, says Mr. Burton, albeit not as quickly as it did at the outset.
"People are actually thinking about what they send electronically," he says.
没有电子邮件，世界将会怎样？
有人梦想拥有一个没有战争和疾病的世界，而杰里米?伯顿(Jeremy Burton)却梦想著拥有一个没有电子邮件的世界。
伯顿和多数办公室一族一样，整天都坐在电脑前，他最近发现自己花费在查阅电子邮件上的时间变得越来越多，不过，作为矽谷(Silicon Valley)一家大公司的市场营销部副总裁，他有能力为此做些什么。
而他所做的一切，别人也就只能想想而已。
两个月前，他给自己的部门定了一条规矩：今后每个周五员工们都不得使用电子邮件。他手下的240个员工必须照此执行，如果想在星期五向同事通报个消息什么的，他们就得拿起电话或是亲自跑去和同事当面说说。
即便是涉及到业务方面的事情也不得使用电子邮件，违者罚款。
伯顿说：“虽然电子邮件应该是提高工作效率的工具，但现在已经发展到了有些滥用的地步。”
当然，电子邮件也有诸多优点，它可以减少会议和电话的数量，能留下决策的书面纪录，还能让处于不同时区的人更加方便地联系。现在人们大量地使用电子邮件，因此它发送起来也十分容易。
根据国际数据公司(IDC)的统计，自1999年以来，北美地区电子邮件的日发送量增长两倍，达到了119亿封，其中还不包括垃圾邮件的数量（这完全是另外一个问题）。
显然，这么多的电子邮件需要人们花费不少的时间去阅读。俄亥俄州哥伦布市的咨询公司The ePolicy Institute称，有48%的办公室员工每天要花费1至2个小时的时间处理电子邮件，另有10%的人每天花在电子邮件上的时间超过了半个小时。
伯顿所在公司Veritas Software Corp.主要生产那些能够帮助各个公司备份或安全地存储它们的电脑文件--包括电子邮件的产品。伯顿发起这个“无电子邮件日”的构想最初来源于他的一次伦敦之旅，今年年初当他到公司驻伦敦的办事处出差时，他发现伦敦同事的电子邮箱里的邮件数量还不到10封。
而他自己每天会收到约400封的电子邮件，要花上至多两个小时的时间处理它们，其中多数是一些发给其他人、但同时又抄送给他的邮件、还有一些是垃圾邮件。
伯顿回忆起伦敦同事对他说的一句话：“你发得越多，收到的就越多。”于是他决定进行一个小试验。
伯顿只在市场营销部内部实行了这项电子邮件禁令，员工们周五仍可以向其他部门或向公司以外发送电子邮件。如果发现有人违反这一规定，其违规发出的每一封邮件将被处以1美元的罚款，这些钱将被用于慈善业。
自然，伯顿是通过电子邮件宣布这个禁令的（实际上，这封电子邮件上还标记有“很重要”的字样。）伯顿在邮件中这样写道：“这并不意味这我们周五就可以吊儿郎当地工作。”因为对于一些员工而言，电子邮件就等于工作。
伯顿这封电子邮件的直接后果是引发大量新邮件喷涌而出，员工们互相发信询问这一规定是不是真的。
这可是动真格的。6月25日周五是第一个“无电子邮件日”，当天上午大家还就此互相开开玩笑，有的员工不断跑到伯顿办公室，想看看谁会是第一个犯规的人。
这第一个犯规的倒霉蛋是产品营销部经理迈克尔?帕克(Michael Parker)，他在零点刚过11分钟时向营销部的一个同事发出了一封有关产品投放的电子邮件。
帕克说：“我也是人，我也很脆弱。”
他因此缴纳了1美元的罚金，同时，为了树立一个反面典型，帕克的照片还被钉在了办公室的墙上，并且他还被迫在胸前挂上一个鲜红色的字母“E”从大厅走过。
当天还逮著了其他一些违规发送电子邮件的员工，许多人还找来种种借口为自己辩解，其中一个员工说，他之所以在周五发送电子邮件，是因为他电脑上的时钟不准。
但几周过去后，员工们开始渐渐适应了这个规定，工作也照样能够完成。
他们使用电话联系，进行面对面的交谈，或是来回走动走动。
由于市场营销部分散在不同的大楼里面，员工们还需要适应在不同的大楼间来回奔走。
比如企业营销部的主管达娜?洛夫(Dana Loof)，她通常走路的最远距离就是到餐厅吃个午饭，她自称为“时尚先锋”，因此常常会穿些时髦的高跟鞋来显示自己的品位。不过，自从有了这项“电子邮件禁令”后，她发现每周五自己要走近3英里的路，那些高跟鞋让她的脚疼得要命，于是洛夫决定换上一双粗笨但很舒适的运动鞋。
尽管员工们想尽各种办法提醒自己不要以身试法，但有时候也难免会犯错。Veritas渠道营销的高级主管朱莉?帕里什(Julie Parrish)在桌上贴满了各种黄色的报事贴，提醒自己不要犯规。不过，有一个周五，她还是忘记了这回事，高高兴兴地发起了电子邮件，在她意识到这一点时，她已经发出了65封邮件。
不过，伯顿没有罚她那么多钱，只让她缴纳了20美元的罚款。
产品营销部的营销经理杰夫?豪斯曼(Jeff Hausman)的小组有9名营销人员，为了能够想法绕过这个禁令，他们开始使用网络寻呼软件进行联系，这种软件可以让电脑用户互相之间用文字进行实时地交流，有一点像电子邮件。
不过，这种技术违反了电子邮件禁令的精神，因此也受到了禁止。豪斯曼说，他们想利用另一种电子通信方式来替代电子邮件。
伯顿手下的许多员工称，电子邮件容易让人上瘾，要放弃它可比想像中的困难。
伯顿说，周五电子邮件禁令获得了成功，他计划一直执行下去。有一点值得一提，这些天来，他自己电子邮箱里的邮件数量少了一半，这不仅使得他能更快地处理完工作，而且他的办公室也变得更整洁，因为不再有那么多占地的电子邮件打印稿了。
而其他员工称禁令的好处还不止这些。艺术主管杰夫?伦纳克(Jeff Rennacker)说，一些行文晦涩的电子邮件容易让人产生歧义，而和人进行面对面的交流就不存在这一问题，因此能更快地完成工作。
如今，违反禁令的员工所缴纳的罚金数量已经接近70美元。伯顿说，这一数量还在不断增加，不过增加的速度已不如刚开始时那么快了。
他说：“大家开始真正考虑哪些是需要通过电子邮件进行沟通的了。”
