[Design] High End Email -- OFF

[Kevin Frank]

{Just realized, I replied to Kaitlin, instead of the list. 
Here's the message Kaitlin was replying to. -- Kevin}

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On Thu, 06 Mar 2003 10:28:13 -0800, Kaitlin Duck Sherwood wrote:
> Based on my recent experience as the author of some books on how to
> deal with email overload *and* as a "get through your email faster"
> trainer, I am not sure that people would actually make use of this.
> I met an amazing number of people who were almost hostile to the
> idea of spending any time learning how to get through email faster.


I've been a self-employed computer "professional" since 1990. When I started my 
consulting practice, I thought that most computer users would share my interest 
in using the computer as efficiently as possible. Didn't take long for me to 
figure out that most people have zero interest in doing so.

In all the years, I had one person (a woman, incidentally) ask me to teach her 
how to use her computer more efficiently. And she was only willing to pay for 
one hour of time.

You offer a number of possible reasons why people might not want to deal with 
their email more efficiently. I would suggest that you are being too kind. In my 
experience, most people have trouble with the concept of investing a relatively 
small amount of time now, to save small amounts of time each day, even though 
the overall time savings will far outweigh the initial time investment.

In fact, to generalize a bit more, most people take the short-term path of least 
resistance, regardless of the long-term consequences. (I'm often guilty of that 
myself.)

-- Kevin

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