Observed

Seth suggests asking yourself this before hitting Send: Am I "taking advantage of the asymmetrical nature of email--free to send, expensive investment of time to read or delete?"

Of Seth’s 36 Questions To Ask Before You Send An E-mail, my favorite was Number 32:

If this is a press release, am I really sure that the recipient is going to be delighted to get it? Or am I taking advantage of the asymmetrical nature of email–free to send, expensive investment of time to read or delete?

Of course, this applies to IMs, Twitter and other digital platforms, yes?

Not that this would have done Anthony Weiner much good.  After all, making a stupid choice doesn’t make him stupid, does it?

Yet, too many of us (me included) would be smart to slow down, read the rest of Seth’s list and consider the following in addition:

1. How important is this relationship?
2. What does this client prefer?
3. How much is it worth to stand out?
4. Is it really either/or?
5. Is anybody there?

Are we sacrificing our ability to communicate with one another in thoughtful, measured, memorable ways...in favor of the speed driven by our appetite for greater social intensity?

I sometimes see IM’s that include an apology.  The author seems to realize they’re about to send out something that’s pretty unfiltered and unedited.

Or, as they put it, it’s *raw*.

What a sweet, old school gesture!  I see enough tweets and the like to know that politeness isn’t much valued in the IM world.  It slows things down.

Courtesy may be just one of the things we’re losing as we deepen our attachment to the digital end of the spectrum in the ways we communicate. (more…)

Q. You mentioned you’re doing less e-mail.

LBJ was a master at face-to-face persuasion. Rhode Island’s Senator Theodore Green was, in this case, the mastered. Johnson would probably prefer to cut off one of his own fingers than to send an e-mail.

A. I think e-mail is very often disruptive in corporate cultures. You sit next to people and send e-mail to each other instead of walking over or making a call or just trying to look for the personal interaction. I use e-mail more and more as text messaging — just very, very short messages. It’s very efficient, but I am convinced that e-mail does not replace presence. Also, I never read cc e-mails.

From “Corner Office,” Aug. 29, 2010, in The New York Times, an interview with Kasper Rorsted, the chief executive of Henkel, the consumer and industrial products company based in Düsseldorf, Germany.