The Biggest Problem With Email? It’s Way Too Convenient

The average business user sent and received 122 business emails per day in 2015. This stat, perhaps more than any other, captures the reality of work in the 21st century—and this is a problem.

It’s increasingly clear that this incessant barrage of workplace messages is making us miserable. For one thing, it expands the scope of our jobs well beyond the standard 9-to-5 day. Now, whether at the dinner table or on vacation, digital communication enforces a constant tether to the office, impatiently demanding our energy and attention. And when we do try to buckle down and produce things that matter, the constant interruptions mute our ability to apply our craft at a high level.

Is this really the heralded future of work? Are we doomed to live out our office lives as human network routers, ceaselessly moving information in and out of our inboxes while vainly hoping this busyness will somehow alchemize into productivity?

It’s hard not to feel fatalistic. The ability to reach anyone quickly and easily is incredibly convenient; we cannot go back.

Or can we?

In order to understand the solution to our current email dilemma, it may be helpful to examine a few historical examples of communication overload. During the Revolutionary War, general George Washington had a great foe who sometimes seemed “more daunting than British arms,” as described by the Pulitzer-winning Washington biographer Ron Chernow. What was this opponent? Washington’s correspondence.

“Washington devoted far more time to the onerous task of drafting letters than to leading men into battle,” Chernow explains, and “at times he appeared overwhelmed by the bureaucratic demands.”

Essentially, all departments relevant to the war effort reported to Washington and required his personal response. He was also responsible for keeping Congress up to speed—a nearly untenable burden that once led Washington to write in protest that he and his staff “are confined from morn till evening hearing and answering the applications and letters of one and another.”

Fast forwarding to the early days of World War II, we find another George in command of America’s military: George C. Marshall, Franklin Roosevelt’s hand-picked Army chief of staff. Marshall quickly found himself in the middle of a bureaucratic mess reminiscent of Washington’s struggles. But Marshall refused to suffer the same fate as the elder George.

Soon after accepting this position, Marshall instituted a rapid and sweeping reorganization that minimized the staff and radically reduced paperwork. He put into place more rigid communication structures (including a strict process for when and how to deliver a brief) and started to emphasize delegation.   As an army report on his leadership style explains: “[Marshall] expected his staff to act decisively within their authority…[to] do their assigned jobs with a minimum of supervision and make decisions without waiting to be told.”

Marshall used this system to maintain his habit of leaving work each day at 5:30pm—protecting his evenings for burnout-repelling leisure time. This was far different from the wartime life of Washington, who once specifically complained to Congress that his burdensome correspondence left him “no hours for recreation.”

Marshall summarized his motivating management principle with typical concision: “A man who worked himself to tatters on minor details had no ability to handle the more vital issues of war.”

I’m telling the story of these two generals because they are a reminder that workplace inefficiency is not a modern problem. But they also both highlight an issue too often ignored in our discussion of work in the 21st century: the difference between convenience and effectiveness.

George Washington’s management style was undoubtedly convenient. For all matters, the procedure couldn’t be simpler: Send a letter to Washington and see what happens.

George Marshall’s management style, by contrast, was much less convenient. Rigid processes, structured communication, an atmosphere of delegated responsibility—all of this introduced roadblocks and complexities into the flow of everyday business.

And yet, most agree that Marshall’s approach is far superior. His goal was not to make everyone’s life easier. It was to be maximally effective at winning World War II.

We readily accept the idea that effectiveness trumps convenience in many areas. Indeed, this prioritization is often treated as common sense, which is why it’s all the more surprising when we step back and recognize the one segment of our culture where it’s routinely ignored: knowledge work.

The culture of constant communication described in this article’s opening persists not because it’s somehow fundamental to business in the modern world, but instead because it’s become incredibly convenient. This distinction is crucial.