In 1971, Ray Tomlinson invented and developed electronic mail. From there, email became an indispensable part of daily business activities in nearly all aspects of commerce.
Today, email has taken over our lives. According to a McKinsey analysis, the average professional spends 28% of the workday reading and answering email. For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent on email and 120 messages received per day. That’s over 30,000 emails a year.
Here are 10 reasons why email has become an inefficient way to communicate:
It’s information overload
Email has become a prevalent form of communication in the corporate world. Email is used to share information with relevant people so they will be kept in loop. But, it also clutters up your inbox and makes it more difficult to keep track of what’s important.
Your inbox is constantly growing
You just checked your email and four minutes later you have three new emails. If you don’t check these emails, they just seem to wildly multiply. Then, when you do check your email, you may go down a rabbit hole and get caught up in something that could have waited.
The pressure to reply
Do you have co-workers who instantly call, Skype, or Slack you if you don’t answer their emails within five minutes? It’s easier to answer the email promptly, then to answer a call and be taken away from the task currently you were doing.
It sucks up your time
Over checking emails is common. Most professionals check their emails 15 times a day. As mentioned earlier, the average full-time worker in America, spends a staggering 2.6 hours on following-up on email. It’s better to check your email once an hour, or even less during the day.
Emails are too long to read
Many emails are the length of a short novella and may wander like a Jane Austen novel. With multiple topics, rambling thoughts, and twists and turns, it can be difficult to capture the vital points. Or, you may give up reading it all together.
People don’t open or respond to email
Most professionals have more than 200 emails in their inbox at any given time. They only respond to about 25% of these emails. And, as the inbox continues to clutter up with more emails, it’s harder and harder to keep track of them all.
It’s difficult to search email
Email is inefficient when it comes to searching your email. While email offers search capabilities, if you don’t remember the person’s exact name, their email address, or the title of the email, it can be very difficult to find the content your searching for.
Sharing too many attachments
While email is a great method for sharing documents, it can be difficult to find the right document in your cluttered inbox. And, when trying to find an attachment that was sent via email, it’s a cat and mouse game to locate the right email that contains the attachment you need.
Email doesn’t support rich media
We use social media on a regular basis. We are used to adding images that help convey the messages we’re sending. Email doesn’t support this kind of media versatility, limiting senders on how they can explain what they want to say, as well as what a recipient can get from a message.
Watch out for viruses and spam
While antivirus software has improved by leaps and bounds over the years, there’s still the chance of a virus infecting your computer. And, spammers have become more tech savvy, and you may accidentally click an email link that you shouldn’t have.
It’s time for a better way to share knowledge. The CatalystXL mobile platform is turnkey… simple to launch, simple to implement, and simple to manage. We put knowledge into people’s hands… literally.
Built on the simple concept of the flashcard, the CatalystXL mobile app can be up-and-running in as little as 48 hours (yes, really). We make it easy to share, access, and learn any kind of information – all from a smartphone (or any other connected device). Our mission: get knowledge into people’s hands – literally.
Schedule a Demo to learn more about our mobile app.
