Blackberry Issues Today

When someone sends you an e-mail, when they should expect a response? Within an hour? One day? It's a simple question, but the answer (and you can send them to me via e-mail if you like) is not.

I think most of us try to respond within one business day, and if we can e-mail in advance sufficient by the end of the day as well. It is a very good rule of thumb.

But then some of us expect an even faster response, and be angry or impatient with the delay. To me, this is something out of balance, as some scenes from the film Koyaanisqatsi. (Little irony department: I now live about a mile the former site of Pruitt-Igoe made famous in the movie.)

I was talking with a colleague yesterday about how she often answers to your emails late at night after that her husband was sleeping. It made me think of how many times can I respond to emails in the early morning, before my own wife agrees.

And many of us can not leave the laptop home when going on vacation for fear of the huge pile of e-mail-up that await us in our turn? Or they can not help ourselves, but "multitasking" during meetings and clean up our inboxes, when it is supposed to be part of the meeting itself?

Some are hyperactive responders e-mail by clicking blackberries and be accessible 24×7. You know who you are.

Is this healthy? I'm beginning to wonder.

The irony is that I have full circle in the e-mail response. Back in the early days of using my own e-mail, I tried to answer every e-mail I received within a few hours. This is the beginning 1980, when the Internet was still a science project DoD, and few people had the ability to send messages between companies, let alone the world. It was still a novelty in then.

In early 1990, I had an e-mail Internet accessible, in fact, several. When I started Network Computing magazine, we were a the first magazines to include email addresses of the authors of each article, which was also new concept then. Now you can find them for lines of credit in my local newspaper. I was also one of the first users of the precursor of the BlackBerry, called Radiomail. I remember once picking up a toll plaza on the Garden State Parkway to answer some e-mails. A copy of curious approached and was wondering what I was doing.

Back to Computer Associates (now known as CA only) first implemented in your network e-mail, they really turned the system off for several hours during the working day because they wanted their employees to the job done. That was before they were arrested several executives cook the books, so I think it worked very well. They finally stopped doing that, and now e-mail address is available 24×7, as well as elsewhere.

The landscape is e-mail has changed since then and that was a novelty is now de rigueur. Today most of us think nothing about e-mail from people who are across the world and of course now I get spam in about a dozen different languages, if I could find the sets of characters that come in my inbox.

The trick to success with e-mail can be summarized in one word: balance. Or return to balance e-mail.

"I do however still get a laugh for those who complain that CanÂ't get the job done in the office, are still sending personal e-mails out all day, "says Rich DiGirolamo, who writes an e-mail fun newsletter and is a leading professional speaker." Some of us make every effort to answer every email within twenty-four hours, but sometimes we have to prioritize them. Yours just can not be as important to me as you think it is. But he will have answered, I promise. "

I think it's a great strategy. I recommend aside some time each days to read your emails, and perhaps a separate time to write the answers. But do not let bleed throughout the day.

Maybe we need a rehabilitation center Malibu e-mail to help those who need your life back into balance.

David Strom is a noted speaker, author, podcaster and consultant who has written two books and thousands of magazine articles for dozens of IT publications such as Computerworld, eWeek, Information Week and Network Computing. His blog can be found at http://strominator.com, and he can be reached at david@strom.com.

BlackBerry Outage: Problems continue in North America 1 by 1

Clarion CX609 2-DIN CD/MP3/WMA/AAC Receiver with USB Port $399.99 From their symmetric design with large rotary volume control, to the illumination accented dark color scheme, CX609 car audio player 2-DIN source units provide dynamic looks that blend into your car interior, in a spacious layout that will make them a pleasure to use, see and hear….