End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email

From the New York Times

THIS Labor Day weekend, odds are you’ll peek at your work email on your "day off" — and then feel guilty about it.

You might envy the serene workers at Daimler, the German automaker. On vacations, employees can set their corporate email to “holiday mode.” Anyone who emails them gets an auto-reply saying the employee isn't in, and offering contact details for an alternate, on-call staff person. Then poof, the incoming email is deleted — so that employees don’t have to return to inboxes engorged with digital missives in their absence...

If this can happen in precision-mad, high-productivity Germany, could it happen in the United States? Absolutely. It not only could, but it should.

White-collar cubicle dwellers complain about email for good reason. They spend 28 percent of their workweek slogging through the stuff, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

E-mail: out of control

Perhaps you remember the Internet guru who declared e-mail bankruptcy in the last month or so. here's a couple suggestions for your burgeoning e-mail problem. (You know you have one.)

How to Get and Stay on Top of Your Email

Spend Less Time on Email and Get More Done

Keep Emails Short

Finally, just how DOES one spell e-mail? I find one ancient (1995) reference to e-mail and a British reference to email. So, I have no idea.