Getting Off the E-mail/IM Bandwagon

I’m a talker; I’m a people person. I’m one of those people who has animated conversations with barbers, garbagemen and taxi drivers. At parties, I’ll meet peple and fairly quickly know what they do, where they grew up, how many brothers and sisters they have, and how they met their wife/husband. I’m interested in people and like talking. Yet somewhere over the past decade, I’ve become a digitial communications junkie. First it was e-mail and, most recently, it has become instant-messaging. My Gmail in-box has 12,537 messages, and when I have my Blackbery, I find it hard to resist the urge to check it on a regular basis.

Things have got to change.

So today, I’m climbing off the e-mail/IM bandwagon. Whenever possible, I’m going to talk the talk and I’m going to walk the tal. No more extended e-mail exchanges, no more IM flurries. Instead, I’m going to pick up the phone (or click on a Skype contact) and call someone. Why? It’s mostly because I find e-mail and IM exchanges lack substance. You end up sending digital packets back and forth to each other but you don’t really communicate effectively or well. It’s like eating a meal, and then realizing you’re still hungry. In other words, they’re unsatisfying.

Walking away from e-mail and IM will seem like a radical move to many people because they’re both seen as effective ways to communicate. Rather than interupt someone by calling them, we take the easy way out by sending an e-mail or IM. Unless the message involves a simple statement (“I’m leaving work now”) or requires a simple answer (“I’ll be there in seven minutes), you should talk to someone. Far too often, conversations that require intonation, nuance, diplomacy and subtlely are frustratingly ineffective. Yet we insist on having these digital conversations even though we know many of them are not terribly good or productive.

For me, that changes today. While I’m not abandoning e-mail or IM because they can be useful tools, I’m going to start calling people. Sure, it could take more time and I’ll probably end up leaving a ton of voice-mail messages but at the end of the day, I’ll feel like I’m really communicating rather than going through the digital motions.