The Durable Human

Give the Gift of Less E-Mail

As we face a new year’s load of fresh information, consider this resolution: abiding by the Email Charter.  

It’s Chris Anderson’s idea. As curator of the TED thought leadership conferences, he gets a torrent of e-mail. Chris pines for the good old days when people didn’t “barge into someone’s house or office and expect, then and there, 20 minutes of thoughtful, focused attention.”  

As he warned in the Washington Post, your inbox is “a to-do list that anyone in the world can add to. If you’re not careful, it can gobble up most of your week.” Or someone else’s.  

Here’s an example. Say I get an e-mail about a grant which could benefit my non-profit. I begin reading the lengthy attachment and soon my attention wanes. What do I do next? Forward it on to someone else, with the note: “Do you think we should bring this up at our meeting next week?”

In one quick phrase, I become an evil Time Dictator. I have dumped my thinking time onto an unsuspecting Other whom I hope will read the whole thing and get back to me.

Chris calls that a “tragedy of the commons.” In this case, the “commons” is humankind’s total amount of attention. He goes on: “Instant communication makes it a little too easy to grab a piece of that attention. The result of all those little acts of grabbing is a giant drain on our time, energy and sanity.”

Well, it’s time for me and everybody else to stop being so lazy and inconsiderate.

Luckily, Chris can help us. Thousands of people sent him ideas for putting a stopper on the time drain. He boiled them down into the Email Charter. Just five of its ten tenets are a good start:

1. Respect the Recipient’s Time. If you start the e-mail process, you control the time it will cost others. Think before you press send. If you can do the mental work yourself, don’t slough it on others.
2. Short or Slow does not equal Rude. Understand that when you send a message it may take a while for someone to get back to you. If the reply is brief, be grateful not miffed.
3. Avoid Open-ended Questions. Stop sending e-mail with questions like “Thoughts?” Give the recipient finite choices such as: “Would you like me to a) call b) stop by or c) butt out?”
4. Use EOM and NRN. If possible, slim down your message into a phrase and put it in the subject line followed by the letters EOM. “End of Message” indicates the recipient does not have to bother opening the e-mail. If you need to write a longer message and it doesn’t require an answer, end the e-mail with the letters NRN. That means “No Response Necessary,” which is one letter shorter than Chris’s “No Need to Respond.” 
5. Disconnect. Limit the time you spend each day on e-mail or read it only at a proscribed time of day. One day a weekend, don’t check e-mail. Set up an auto-response with a link to the Email Charter.

After I read the Charter, I was so impressed I clicked on “Join Our Mailing List” even though I didn’t really want more mail. I almost cheered when up popped these words:

 NO!!   Don’t do this!
The last thing you need is another email newsletter!
In fact, we pledge never to email you.
Never. Ever.  (Now please go unsubscribe from the other newsletters you never read.)

Author’s note: The preceding is an excerpt from my upcoming book.

Getting to Know Capital Bikeshare

Bike share gives you another way to travel short distances, such as from a Metro station to a nearby restaurant. 110 of the solar-powered bike share stations have sprung up in the busier areas of Washington and Arlington.  

My ride 

Rolling away from the station outside the entrance to the Crystal City Metro, I immediately felt comfortable on my CaBi bike. The weight of the sturdy frame and the three gears kept my progress slow and under control as we negotiated stop-and-go car traffic. 

CaBi members use a plastic key to unlock bikes from the station

Since I was used to seeing Crystal City from a car window, I thought it wasn’t much more than a drab concrete jungle. But gliding slowly along, I got a closeup view of how much had changed since I moved from the area thirty years ago. Now, beautiful potted plants dot street corners. Graceful shade trees sway in the breeze. Sidewalk cafes beckon. 

And bike share stations are located every couple of blocks. That close proximity is what makes the system a viable form of transportation. Our tourguide tells us that lots of people now grab a bike instead of a taxi or bus. They predict that as Metrorail gets more crowded, bike share will become a desired alternative for more people and actually free up spaces on trains.

Milano last summer

I liked my bike in D.C. better than the one I rode last summer in Milan. For one thing, a bungy cord secures your stuff in the cargo rack. We were bummed in Italy when our new DSLR camera slid out of the open metal basket and crashed on the sidewalk. Capital Bikeshare maintenance folks report their bikes are much more reliable then the finicky fleet in Paris.

I wore business clothes for the ride and soon realized one’s outfit should rarely be an impediment. Truth be told, if you’re wearing high heels and have to go any distance at all, it’s a lot more comfortable to ride a bike than it is to walk.

CaBi facts

Capital Bikeshare is remarkably safe. More than 700,000 rides have been taken on the system since CaBi opened last fall, but there have been very few accidents.  In fact, medical assistance has only been necessary in only about a dozen instances. CaBi adds an additional measure of safety by teaming up with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association to offer free classes in negotiating city traffic. 

Bike share is a great deal. You’ll need to pay to get into the system. A year-long membership costs $75. It’s $30 for a month and $5 for a day. But having done that, any time you use a bike, the first half hour is free.  If you time it right, you could take as many short hops as you want and never pay another dime. 

Recycling Rocks the Empire State Building

As of last week, all the windows in the Empire State Building have been replaced…using the existing glass…repurposed right on site.  Please excuse the ellipses, but this is really exciting.

As Kevin Surace of Serious Materials tells it — Tony Malkin, owner of the New York City landmark, wanted to save money on his energy bills, but didn’t want to waste his existing glass and Kevin said, “I can do that.”

So there, in a temporary shop on the fifth floor, Kevin’s crew remade each of the building’s 6,500 windows, crafting them into a new product which is 400% more efficient than what was there before.

The windows are part of an energy-efficiency retrofit that will achieve the astounding feat of making the Empire State greener than 90% of other office buildings. Tony expects it will save him $4.4 million a year. 

Kevin Surace is a game-changer. He’s one of those rare individuals who give humans a good name because they’re so darn smart – not just in book learning (his degree is in Electrical Engineering Technology), but about how to influence other people to do what’s best for humanity at large.

As Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, he was featured speaker at the 2010 Rochester Institute of Technology Entrepreneurs Conference, giving a rapt crowd his ten secrets for building a great company:

1. Identify a problem. Buildings and making the the stuff they’re built from generate 52% of the world output of carbon dioxide.

2. Provide great solutions. Since dual-pane glass is basically ineffective at reducing heat and cold transfer, Kevin’s company has come up with something better.

3. Recognition by peers is important. Kevin showed two videos of President Obama extolling the fact that Serious re-opened a shuttered factory and put hundreds of people back to work making energy efficient products.

4. Hire the right people for the job. Most of his come from Silicon Valley not from the building industry.

5. Have a vision for the next 5 to 10 years (at least) into the future.

6. Amazing client references help a lot.  3.5 million people visit the Empire State Building every year. My guess is Kevin will find some way to tell them about the windows.

7. Disruptive innovation. Stand up and knock over the table of existing practice.  Kevin believes nothing happens if no one takes risks.

8.  Disruptive marketing. Be there the moment the customer needs you. Monthly newsletters don’t cut it any more.  Own the online conversation about your product category.

9.  People notice when you’re nice. Smiling faces of people you put back to work: Priceless.

10. Don’t be afraid to change everything we know.