How much email is too much? Yesterday, I was in Des Moines giving a RenGen talk. Over lunch, the topic of email ettiquette came up. Michael Morain from the Des Moines Register and John Busbee from KFMG radio and I were talking about managing multiple media obligations. Michael wondered: “What’s the human threshold for email? At what point do you just give out because you can’t respond to one more email?” No one knew.
So, how to simplify?
Take up a haiku approach? Fewer words? Well, consider Abe Lincoln’s quandary, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
Or are we headed for a new language based on symbols? It’s universal, visual, and quick. It would replace the cryptic, letter-based code of IM that leaves so much up for misinterpretation.
The
military uses symbols. It helps clarify, train, and command quick behaviors. Then there’s TripleInk, a firm that specializes in symbology. Also noteworthy, the hand drawings of bloggers that are so popular. Just more evidence that this move towards visual language is revving up.