About a year ago, Jason Fried wrote this:

"Thanks to email, people across cultures, continents, countries, cities, and communities communicate every day. It’s reliable. It’s simple. It makes it easy for two humans to share their love, and for millions of people to earn a living.".

Amen, Jason.

Communication is so fragmented today. I grew up in the 1980's and I honestly miss the simplicity of the telephone. You just called someone. They were there or they weren't. It was pretty simple.

Yes, technology and the advancement of more communication channels has solved problems, brought the world closer together, increased security, etc, etc . It's done a lot of good. But it's also created a lot of chaos.

Today, in addition to email, people can, and will, reach out to you in a plethora of ways:

It's chaos.

Conversation are now everywhere. Some have better features than others, some are terrible, and all lack at least one feature that makes them "the one to rule them all". Everyone has a different opinion as to which one is best and why.

To me, SMS/Text is the worst. There is zero organization. You simply have conversations stacking up on top of each other, all on the smallest screen in your digital life, tied to a phone numbering system that dates back to 1879 which no one can remember today anyway. It's programmed in our device and we mostly look them up by name anyway.

Yet, it's still one of the most popular ways to communicate, especially in the United States where we're supposed to be so "technologically advanced". I know people who use SMS/Text more than email. They literally have professional business conversations over text. Then, when they're trying to find that conversation, they hover themselves over the smallest screen in their digital life trying to find it.

I am flabbergasted that people put themselves through this! Could you make things any harder on yourself?

WhatsApp and Telegram are more widely used across the world. The United States is still hung up on texting, and for the life of me I do not know why. My speculation is it has a lot to do with Apple. The US is the biggest market for iPhones and so iMessage is what everyone is locked in to. Considering the popularity of Android in most other markets, WhatsApp or Telegram offer similar features as iMessage, (message, video, talk, group chat, emoji reactions, and group calls), all in one app. Google still has this smattered across several apps in their ecosystem, but I feel it is because it is more work, or business, focused where the desire for those applications to be separate is more popular. However, the US fights the adoption of these applications for domestic use, and we're still fighting over green or blue bubbles and trying to remember phone numbers, and using the most antiquated organization of conversation ever.

When Facebook was the most popular, their Messenger application got popular. Then they bought Instagram and merged that into Messenger.

X, (formerly Twitter), is gaining ground and has direct message capabilities, but it still has not taken off the way it could or should, (at least to combat SMS/Text).

Slack, Google Chat, and Microsoft teams are where the work conversations are living in conjunction with e-mail and pretty much any project management or sales tool your colleagues are using as well.

But ... out there sits the one thing everyone has used, whether work or personal, since the 1970's, (yeah it's that old since the first one was sent, but got increasingly popular in the 1990's, and then just got better and better with new features up until today).

Email.

I think it gets a bad wrap because most people don't know how to keep their inbox organized. They give up their email everywhere whether it's buying something, wanting a discount, requesting more information, etc ... and then this got abused by every business in the planet and became the targeted channel for anything and everything anyone wanted to put in front of you.

So I get how email got out of control. But now I think we're there with SMS/Text and even some of these other chat platforms. Perhaps it's not as bad with the work channels, (Slack, Google Chat, Teams, etc), because they're behind company walls and used for work ... but then work never leaves you alone. So there's room for improvement there.

Many email platforms have gotten better about SPAM controls, blocking things, filtering, searching, categorizing, labeling, etc. Hey seems to be the only one to really lock it down, but I think you have to be a big fan of 37Signals, (makers of Basecamp, Hey, etc), and I'm often alone in that realm. Hey has an annual cost to it, so most people care so little about the organization of their digital life, that they're not going to pay for something they can get for free, (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, or whatever).

But I still fight for email.

Personally, SMS/Texting is for my wife, kids, close friends, etc. The lack of organization in text messaging on a mobile device means that if I don't get to your message right away, others are going to come in and yours is going to get buried. 

Out of sight, out of mind. 

If I don't see it I'm probably going to forget about it. I might have seen it, but it's not that important right now compared to other things, and it can wait till later. What I love about email in this scenario, as you can snooze and email on almost any platform for a specified amount of time. I think there's also some parameters to be put in place for the sender. Are you texting me because you think whatever you have to say should be most important to me right now? If that's the case, just call me! We carry these phones around with us and nobody calls anyone anymore! 

I work in an industry where they live and die by text messaging and I find that very hard to then service and support them well. If everyone is just going to text me, because they feel they have the direct line of communication to the CEO, how am I supposed to effectively manage conversations with all of our customers if they all feel the same way? What if I'm on a 9 hour international flight? What if my phone is in my truck because I'm working with a customer in the field? What if I died? 

These are reasons why I feel text messaging in a professional environment doesn't work. If you go through the proper channels, like email, I can have email forwarded to someone else in my absence. We can set up shared inboxes so multiple people get alerted when an email comes through so that if I'm not available, someone else can help you and you don't have to wait around for me.

Email is also more universal, meaning, if you're in another country and text messaging me costs you money, you can just email me. This is so much easier than wondering if I have a WhatsApp account, use Telegram, have an iPhone and therefore iMessage will work, try to find me on Facebook and message me there. Just about everyone has an email address. It's device agnostic so it doesn't matter if it comes from a mobile device, a big desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, wearable device, you can do it from any device and it doesn't matter what device I receive it on.

When an email is sent to me, I can snooze it for later so I don't forget because I might be in the middle of something right now. I can mark it as important and get to it as soon as possible. I could just reply right away, and even include other people who maybe could help if I am busy. I can catalog it into a sub-folder, or label, for later so I have it forever as a resource. 

Many email platforms have the capability to work with third-party software, thus allowing you to push it somewhere else automatically for even further organization and actionable insight. 

Because of all these rules and capabilities, I don't have to give out personal phone number and have it go off unnecessarily. If I simply just wanted to buy underwear from you, but don't need you blowing up my inbox for the rest of my life, I can mark you as spam and send you away forever. Hey email has a "Screen Out"  feature which does this the best I've ever seen.

I realize this method may not be what is the most attractive. Many people want their emojis, their screen celebrations, and all these other things that, quite honestly, I don't care about. But, that doesn't mean other people don't care about them or enjoy them. So I get that. 

But I guess where I struggle is when I see people extremely disorganized, things getting forgotten, they can't find information or conversations, and yet they complain about it. Well, get yourself organized! Stop doing everything through text messaging and be a professional once in awhile!

Because I mentioned I work in an industry where text messaging is very prominent, we've gone through the steps to make our main phone number the type of phone number that you can text, or call, and it all goes to a centralized ticketing system. I've been working on getting that same number, or another one, associated with a WhatsApp Business account but it has been increasingly difficult with many challenges and regulatory paperwork that needs to be filed for something that should be simple, or could be completely avoided altogether, by just using email.

Next up ... the calendar. ☝️ Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

craig ganssle