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Valleywag
NICK DOUGLAS — "If you've sent me an email (and you aren't my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again." So says Fred Wilson, venture capitalist, declaring e-mail bankruptcy today on his blog. He's not the first high-profile person to take this measure. Here are three other notables who've given up on their e-mail (the most famous of whom reportedly white-lied) and three who found a better way.
- Lawrence Lessig: The highest-profile email bankruptcy to date. The copyright attorney (who fought a Supreme Court case against a 20-year extension of all U.S. copyrights) sent a mass e-mail in 2004 asking anyone with important unanswered e-mail to reply, which would flag their mail as important. He carried off the task with aplomb, apologizing for failing to maintain "cyber decency." But rumor has it that Lessig still went through much of his "bankrupt" e-mail.
- Andrew Baron: The producer of the Rocketboom show reportedly declared an e-mail reboot in 2006.
- Michael Arrington: In October 2006, the publisher of the TechCrunch blog came back from vacation and deleted months of e-mails. He also turned off instant messaging.
- The better fix: Sean Bonner: Instead of dropping all his current e-mails, Sean Bonner put a throttle on future mail. The founder of the Metroblogging city-blog network started autoresponding to e-mail this month, saying he only checks e-mail once a day.
- Tim Ferriss: Sean's following what Ferriss recommends in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss follows his own plan (and apparently truly works four hours a week).
- Andy Baio: Upcoming's founder says he built a 10,000-e-mail backlog in 2006. He spent six weeks fixing it.
Before you try this at home, remember that the people above can get hundreds of e-mails a day. Try autoresponders before you try bankruptcy; everyone appreciates some sort of response. Consider hiring an assistant, even part-time, for less than you could make by saving your e-mail time. If these measures seem like too much, you're not that bad off. You just need to get quicker at managing your e-mail.
(Photo: Midnight Beep)
Comments
Except for public figures receiving 10,000+ messages a day, I don't see the need for an autoresponder (unless you're on vacation, perhaps).
Someone's autoresponse simply wastes my time.
If I send an e-mail, I'll assume they got it and await their reply. If I don't hear from them in a reasonable amount of time, I'll call.
I might have considered this, but instead, I use the methods in LifeHacker: the book for managing emails. It has saved at least a few dozen hairs on my forehead in the past year.
These people must be pretty high profile (although, none of the names are familiar). If I worked at my job for 4 hours a week or didn't return 95% of my work related email, I would be out of my professional job. I say if they can't take the hand they were dealt, they shouldn't have gotten involved. They need to buck-up to their digital responsibility or hire someone to do it for them.
I agree that auto responders are not necessary (unless truly unwired and merely for common courtesy) and it says a lot about people that feel the need to use them to keep their livelihood under control.
Actually, I am giving some serious consideration to giving up email entirely. The people who I know personally are always sending me crap that I don't care about and most of my interactive communications are accomplished via web based forums.
However, I do recognize the need for an email address for ordering products online, so if I do it I will adopt a non-english word as my user name and use plus addressing to easily track spam sources.
I wonder how many people have considered falling off the email grid entirely.
This is truly pathetic. Is giving up the only strategy these people can manage?
I'll deal with their email at 50 cents a message...simply forward them all to me...these VC's can afford to invest in not looking so stupid.
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