I also agree that e-mail creates an obligation, where web content does not. Web content must be sought out, e-mail is delivered to you. Your conversation analogy was excellent – and also an illustration of what clearly written communication should look like.

I get to it whenever (and if) I wish! I don’t have to answer the phone. (It is my phone, after all!) And I don’t have to read or answer e-mail until I’m ready to. And I don’t mean that rudely. I just mean–that’s reality!

It’s probably worth it to pay attention to the patterns we form with folks we e-mail with; i.e., don’t set the expectations too high (too quick return response, etc.), then you don’t have to operate at a high speed!

When we backpacked the California Sierras, one of our basic rules was: Don’t start out hiking at a rate faster than you can maintain over the miles.

I think that fits with e-mail life as well.

I figure email is like a letter. Nothing that’s urgent, and little that’s important comes that way. If it does, and I don’t check my mail for a couple of days, too bad. But not my fault.

- “Did you not get my email?”

- “If it’s urgent, phone me.
If it’s important, find me.”

Let’s say you’re talking to a friend at a party, someone comes up between you and your friend and starts talking. That’s like a phone.

Let’s say you’re talking to a friend at a party and someone comes up and stands next to you quietly and won’t leave until you talk to him. That’s email.

Very different. Both interruptive.

But I was comparing emails to web content because both are written communication.

And in that comparison, emails interrupt, websites don’t.

Whenever I go to a website it’s my choice; when I read an email, it’s someone else’s choice.

I don’t mean to say that’s either good or bad. It’s both.

All I’m saying is that we should keep in mind as we write emails that we are creating content that someone will be compelled to deal with, whether they want to or not.

When I think of that it changes how I write.

I remained in contact with my high school principal (until he died last year) for decades via letters, later by email.
They are an extraordinary capture of history, relationship, and value.

I opened up a separate email address for my children to contact, and no one else. Every word we have shared is available to them forever….in THEIR folder.

Texting and email are a way of life, if you are deaf like me. One daughter texted 3,000 times a month, when I was not on a plan. I queried her if it was humanly possible to text a hundred times a day for 30 days in a row.
“”UM, …..Uh-huh, Dad”.
I paid the bill and got a plan for $10 a month unlimited text.

There is an immediacy to texting. Your inbox fills and no more come in. I take my children’s text messages and retype the conversation ALL that was sent, AND received. It is done on a “draft” form email and saved.
At the end of the month, I send the email to myself at “our” email address and all conversations are there for them to read when I am gone. (nicely dated and time stamped too) The material is in a “folder” created for each child.
I wish I had one from my mom and dad, both gone.

Mom died last year, and at the wake, huge envelopes appeared out of nowhere and were distributed to me and 10 siblings. Inside was every card I had ever sent mom and dad, going back decades. I write inside every card and date them, just as mom taught me to do.
I can recall each moment for each card and found it astonishing that she had kept these for decades from all siblings. She was still communicating, after being put in the ground, by recycling our love from long ago days and recorded.

These mean more than VCR family movies, cassettes (i can no longer hear), 35 MM tapes, and the like. Those are “Web” and for all to see. The cards are just “US”.

The same is true for a text and email.
Choose wisely how you use these to document a relationship that counts forever.

Poor capitalization or grammar usage is a reflection of generation mores. If you pay by the text message, it is expensive. Kids know this as parents yell at the bill. So they create a new language to communicate.. TTYL is much cheaper to send, than “Talk to you later”.
Very cool generation!

When Abraham Piper is dead and gone, this very blog will be among the greatest treasures left behind by dad, for the kids.

Words count.
They tell us who you are and what matters.
BTW, every comment I have ever made in any forum is copied and sent by email to my daughter’s folders. They do not know……
yet! :)

One way to think about it might be that we have an obligation to the people who want to contact us. If we determine that a particular mode of communication is too much trouble, then we politely ask people to communicate with us over another medium.

I don’t mean it interrupts in a bad way. I just mean that inserts an obligation into my day where there wasn’t one before. This can be good or bad.

And it inserts this obligation whether I check email every 5 minutes or once a day.