Down With The Two Minute Rule

Scoble writes about the two minute email rule:

I love this new two-minute rule for email from Eric Mack (delete all email that takes more than two minutes to answer). I woke up today to find 48 new emails waiting. Damn, and it’s Sunday. Imagine how many I’ll have on Monday.

This is the problem with answering email — it generates more email.

Marc Smith of Microsoft Research calls the standard time based sorting of email clients the ADD sorting. This two minute rule is the type of thing that makes me recoil in shock and give up hope for a sane future for my daughter. Shouldn't we be removing email that takes less than two minutes to answer? I feel that something that doesn't require attention to interact with is worthless - I'd rather spend my time engaged with concerns that require real thought! Remember, if you get a reply from Robert Scoble it means he hasn't spent any time thinking about the answer.

What I think is really going on here is that for some reason email clients have never provided any real tools for content analysis and management - the market is actually wide open for some quite trivial new functionality (this is what happened with desktop search applications).

Comments

[Nancy]

Heh, seems like Robert's touched a raw nerve with this. I see several of us blogged about an alternative view point. It's interesting what you say about content analysis. It would be great for people like Robert who get a lot of unsolicited email.

Just gotta say a word in Robert's defense tho'...he can put an awful lot of content in two minutes of thinking.

[Mario]

I wouldn't worry about a sane future for your daughter - or at least, email won't be playing a large part in it. I see it with my own 11-year old daughter: she and most of her friends have email accounts, but they are hardly used (and most of that little use is forwarded chain letters). Real communication takes place via IM or SMS. I do believe that once this generation has grown up, and old email junkies like us have retired or else become irrelevant, email will no longer play a large part in internet communications, even in business.

[Kevin Burton]

There's no way I could do that.......... the most important emails I have to send off take about 15 minutes to respond because they're deal based. When money's involved it's hard to send a 2 minute email.

Kevin

[Matthew Hurst]

Mario - My point wasn't really about email per se, but actually about a culture that encourages lack of attention, micro content and fragmented living.

[Mario]

Matthew - I'm not sure if this is really "lack of attention". The term "continuous partial attention" has been bandied about in the past, both with positive and negative connotations - it's one of Stowe Boyd's favourites. While I wouldn't say that there aren't concerns, I also think that our children growing up now are learning to think and communicate quite differently to ourselves. This need not be negative in itself.

[Eric Mack]

The GETTING THINGS DELETED Rule, continues to spread; what began as a toungue-in-cheek comment, has sparked worthwhile discussion.
http://www.ericmackonline.com/ica/blogs/emonline.nsf/dx/getting-things-deleted-scobleized