By Michael Bournazian, Eng., Newsletter Editor, ASQ Senior Member, Quality Management Professional, CSSGB with Rolls-Royce
If the 21st century work experience can be defined by one thing, in my humble opinion, that thing would be . . . . E-MAIL.
This simple, Internet-enabled communication tool has completely transformed not only HOW we work, but also WHERE we can work and WHEN we can work. I won’t go into the myriad of examples, but suffice it to say that our Quality of Work, and as a result our Quality of Life, has been drastically affected.
If it’s one thing I have heard on a regular basis from work colleagues over the past 2 decades, it is that they have all at some point or another had difficulty keeping up with e-mails. And often, this is difficulty experienced on a day-to-day basis: it’s one thing to go on vacation for a week, completely disconnect from work, and then come back to hundreds of new e-mails in your Inbox; it’s even worse if you are burdened with hundreds of e-mails after one night’s sleep.
I’ll never forget one particular occasion back in 2012: I went to see a colleague to discuss something relating to project we were both working on. She was talking on the phone so I sat in the chair next to her desk and patiently waited. While waiting, I happened to glance at her computer screen which was open to the Microsoft Outlook, and I happened to notice the number of unread e-mails in her Inbox. That number was 1,066. Forget about hundreds of e-mails, this was 4 digits worth of unread e-mails. My only thought was “Somewhere in those e-mails, a bomb has gone off”.
During the first week of April (specifically March 31 to April 4, 2025), I decided to try an experiment on myself: I set an objective that at the end of each working day, I would try to have ZERO e-mails in my Inbox, both new and read. This would mean focusing almost exclusively on dealing with issues from received e-mails. Also, no working extra hours to make this happen, I would stick to my regular schedule and would also not miss or cancel any meetings.
Did taking this approach improve my Quality of Work? Perhaps even my Quality of Life?
The results:
- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 0 e-mails in my Inbox at the time of clocking out;
- Wednesday: 6 e-mails in my Inbox at the time of clocking out.
And before you wonder, here are the total e-mails in my Inbox at the start of each day: Monday – 73, Tuesday – 67, Wednesday – 97, Thursday – 45, Friday – 22. Yes, I know, not in the hundreds or thousands (mercifully), but most of those e-mails still have some task(s) behind them, even if it’s just responding to them.
How did it feel working in this manner? One the one hand, I admit it did feel good finishing each day with none to little Inbox e-mails. That said, any work that did not come up as the topic of an e-mail ended up neglected. For example, I have a supplier audit to prepare for and complete in the next few months: did I do any work on that project? Nope, because it never came up in any e-mails during that week, and I can say the same thing for a few other items as well.
So although it felt great at the end of each day knowing that I was slaying the e-mail dragon, I was regularly having guilty feelings that I was not working on certain things and I should not be ignoring them.
Perhaps ultimately since my work is a mix of short and long term projects/issues, I have to find the right balance.
And there is that word . . . BALANCE; you know, from that expression “Work-Life Balance“. More importantly, how good is the Quality of that Balance?
Let’s see what the second week of April brings.
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Thank you, all the best and none of the worst.