Category: email

Great Expectations: Why Letting People Know What You Want is the Nicest Thing You Can Do

Years ago, I read a book called The Paradox of Choice, in which the author, Barry Schwartz, describes the very modern dilemma of being paralyzed by choice (you can watch his TED talk on the subject here). Basically, he talks about how in the Western world we are constantly confronted with a nearly limitless array of options, for everything from blue jeans to laptops to flavors of jam at the supermarket. And rather than making our lives easier, having so many options often stresses us the hell out. 54 Flavors = 53 Losses Say I stop by the store to… Continue reading Great Expectations: Why Letting People Know What You Want is the Nicest Thing You Can Do

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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email golden rule

“Email Unto Others…” Fixing Email with the Golden Rule

Since I started working with Timyo, I’ve read a lot of articles and blog posts about how to better manage email. Some of them are really insightful, and some…not so much. But in almost every case, these articles shared one thing in common—they focused on how the recipient could better manage his inbox. This makes a lot of sense, because it is as recipients that we feel most of the direct pain associated with email—we are hit with a constant barrage of emails that we then have to open, decide how and when to respond to, sort into different folders,… Continue reading “Email Unto Others…” Fixing Email with the Golden Rule

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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Help Me Help You: The Non-Zero Sum Game of Email

From the beginning, our founders Fabrice and Alfred have been clear about the fundamental problem with the email status quo: the imbalance of power between sender and recipient (which I’ve already written a bit about here, if you’d care for a quick review). To sum up, Fabrice and Alfred’s key insight was that by asking the sender to provide just a bit more information at the top of an email—namely, when he would like a response to the email and how he would like the recipient to respond—the recipient’s life becomes a whole lot easier. Our work with Timyo has… Continue reading Help Me Help You: The Non-Zero Sum Game of Email

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email, life
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Email Is Not the Problem. We Are.

I recently reread a great article over at Gizmodo by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan: “Google Can’t Fix What’s Really Wrong With Email: Us”. The article is specifically about Google’s launch last fall of their email management tool, Inbox. However, I think the article is also useful as a broad reminder of what we really mean when we talk about the problem of email. Here’s the author’s description of Gmail Inbox: “It ‘bundles’ related emails into single-topic threads, and even adds relevant info. It gives you the ability to ‘snooze’ emails…it pulls out important info from certain emails so you don’t have to… Continue reading Email Is Not the Problem. We Are.

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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On Email, Upside-Down Pyramids, and Burying the Lede

“I don’t need more time. I need more deadlines.” —Duke Ellington In the world of journalism, they have something known as “burying the lede.” It is one of the cardinal sins of traditional “inverted pyramid”-style journalism, where you put the most important information at the top of the story, and increasingly less important details farther down (so, like an upside-down pyramid, where the top is the biggest part and the bottom is the smallest, hence the cool name). The “lede” is the lead paragraph, which should deliver the most important news in the story. “Burying the lede” is thus putting… Continue reading On Email, Upside-Down Pyramids, and Burying the Lede

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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asap culture

“As Soon As Possible” is Too Soon: Why ASAP Culture is Bad for Everybody

Our culture is spoiled by speed. We think nothing of transoceanic flights that cover distances in a matter of hours that 100 years ago would have taken months. On the Internet, we measure time by the millisecond, and quickly become frustrated when a webpage takes even a few seconds to load (ugh…that’s literally thousands of milliseconds!!) But perhaps no part of our culture is as obsessed with speed as the world of business (well, possibly NASCAR). Prompt attention is obviously an important part of every business, but because technology has enabled us to communicate across more and more space in… Continue reading “As Soon As Possible” is Too Soon: Why ASAP Culture is Bad for Everybody

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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The Yin-Yang of Email

I take two steps forward/ I take two steps back, We come together/ ’cause opposites attract. —Paula Abdul Since time immemorial, our wisest sages and speakers of truth—Lao Tzu, Plato, Descartes, Paula Abdul—have observed that all of reality can be divided into two equal and oppositional forces: light and darkness, heat and cold, up and down, Jedi and the Sith. And while these forces are opposite, they are also complementary; true harmony can only be attained when they are brought into balance. The most famous representation of this perfect balance is the taijitu, the Ancient Chinese symbol of yin and… Continue reading The Yin-Yang of Email

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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Why Email Belongs in Your Toolbox

On the first day of an acting class I took in college, one of my classmates asked our teacher what “school” we would be learning. The Method, like little Bancrofts and Brandos? Or maybe the Meisner technique, repeating our lines to each other over and over until they lost all meaning? My teacher shook his head. “If I were teaching you to be a mechanic,” he said, “I wouldn’t only teach you how to use a wrench and then say ‘go and tell people you’re a Wrench mechanic.’ What good would that be? Sometimes a wrench is useful; sometimes it… Continue reading Why Email Belongs in Your Toolbox

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email
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The Good (Stress), The Bad (Stress), and The Email

When we think about ‘peace of mind’, it’s easy to think of it as just a lack of stress—but ‘lack of stress’ would actually be a horrible, life-threatening state that you shouldn’t wish on your worst enemies. Allow me to explain. Back when I was in junior high, my dad was my health and sex-ed teacher—why yes, it was very awkward! Thank you for asking!—and one of the things he taught us that stuck with me the most was about the two kinds of stress: distress and eustress. Distress is what it sounds like—the thing that damsels are always getting… Continue reading The Good (Stress), The Bad (Stress), and The Email

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email, life
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What went wrong with email?

Timyo began its life with one short question: “What went wrong with email?” In just a few years, email has gone from one of the great new conveniences of the Internet Age to a cause of persistent and increasing anxiety that seems to take ever more time, energy, and patience, until we shudder at the mere thought of checking our inboxes. How did this happen? And more importantly: what can be done about it? What went wrong is a long story, but it basically amounts to two simple truths: email has been saddled with a bunch of jobs that it… Continue reading What went wrong with email?

PUBLISHED ON Posted on Author BY Chris Starrin Categories email, news
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