I know, I know. You can't just QUIT email - but for those that know me, you would have at some point heard me bang on about the evils of email and how society is doomed for collapse should we continue to dance to this never-ending beat of the inbox.
For the past 12 months or so however, I have managed to keep my unread gmail items to (0), thanks partly to the Priority Inbox, but more significantly, I oneday decided to mark all unread emails as read - it was as simple as that.
The idea that email should die is a good one - an extremely good one. But what are the alternatives you may ask? Well, except for a small percentage of you, you have already been (perhaps unknowingly) partaking in an exercise* to get to a future where we would see the idea of 'electronic mail' as something as ancient as the fax machine.
How do we get there?
Well, it's simple isn't it?
Stop emailing.
There, I've said it.
Of course, I can't stop receiving emails - well I could just ignore them but that would be rude. What I'm going to do is just not respond to them, not via gmail anyway - slightly less rude.
This all came about after reading MG Siegler's post on Techcrunch yesterday, to which I responded via a tweet.
And now - I'm following through on that.
Unfortunately, I cannot extend this to the workplace, just because of the nature of the work I do. And there may be some exceptions, like in an emergency or there's just no other way.
However, this is a step towards a REAL goal, and any small measure to help get to a world that has broken free from the shackles of the inbox is a great thing. A marvellous thing.
So from today, I will not be responding to you via my personal email of which I call gmail. Instead, prepare to be bombarded with responses on your wall or on your Google+ account. I shall tag my adventures with #NoEmail
Will you join me?
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Next - Quitting search.
* - for those playing at home, yes, I did mean Facebook.