Why email is broken and what we can do to fix it | Hacker News Reader

Why email is broken and what we can do to fix it

blog.fetchnotes.com

12 pointsjeffepp17 comments

Email is not broken.

It does what it does perfectly.

All these calls for to-do functionality, events planning, etc. Nobody needs it except the writers of these articles. Just use other applications for it. We don't need to shake up email just because you want to.

The problem with email is that it's no longer a communication tool but a representation of the things you need to do. If it was just about communication, then that's one thing, but that's not what it is anymore. That's why you see so many people email themselves or say "yeah email me to remind me". But when you go down that path it's just an unorganized firehose. If we're stuck with communication tools representing "what we need to do", shouldn't we be building better tools to support that rather than saying "eh it's good enough"?

What I don't know that I've ever seen in these kind of "replace email" articles is an investigation of why, if email is so unsuited to this task, it is so widely used this way. It may turn out that the things the author thinks are disadvantages are closely related to advantages of email. For example, the complaint that, with email, anyone can "add something to your to-do list"; sure, that's a problem, but the fact that I can just ask any person I run into to email me a reminder without having to fiddle with my email system to allow them to do that, is actually a big advantage. The challenge for an email replacement, then, would be to allow more control over this without introducing any more friction.

People are doing this because it just works. With email nobody needs to be on the same page in terms of email software stack, TODO organization, having all tools necessary to file an item in TODO list on hand, etc. It's the same thing like using plain old paper to scribble down things and do something better later on, going over notes, when time/place permits.

It may look inefficient, but it doesn't have to be 100% efficient - people are inefficient, live with it.

Total agreement. I think the best way to deal with this is what Apple's Mail.app does - it parses the body of the mail and puts little "add to iCal" buttons next to things it's pretty sure are dates of things to do. It's got some kind of integration with the system todo list, too, but I dunno how it works as I don't use that.

And if you want to explicitly invite someone to something, you mail 'em a calendar item, it picks it up, and you can very definitely stick it in your calendar. It understands a bunch of different calendar formats, even. I thought THAT was pretty much standard across all modern email clients?

Sometimes I wonder if the people writing these diatribes about how EMAIL IS BROKEN IT NEEDS CALENDAR/TODO INTEGRATION are still using Pine or something.

The real brokenness of email is the insecurity and spam, IMHO. Fix spam and you've done something. And good luck on that problem.

Yes please.

E-mail is not broken. People are unorganized and think e-mail is the right tool for the job. E-mail is essentially a communication protocol. Nothing more. I think the idea that e-mail is anything else is what is broken. Stop trying to make e-mail something it clearly isn't.

Changing e-mail, fixing e-mail, or revolutionizing e-mail boils down to a tee-up for these types of derivative services:

1) New whiz-bang client

2) New whiz-bang web-based client

3) New whiz-bang protocol that has 0% chance of replacing e-mail.

4) A segway into some other complimentary product

Generally, whomever writes a book called "Why Its You That Is Broken and How to Fix That and Stop Blaming E-mail" will make a billion dollars.

I'd argue that the folder hierarchy that most email clients and organizational processes use is fundamentally flawed as well.

Information doesn't exist in one place and shouldn't be confined to a single folder. Tagging fixes this.

Honestly, I'm too lazy to tag thing. The search is the only thing I actually enjoy in gmail.

Yeah, a lot of people don't tag things. Search is really paramount for any application that's geared toward productivity or communication.

I use a couple of GTD tags like "waiting for" and "someday", then use Gmail's Multiple Inbox to keep them in peripheral view so I remember review them periodically. Otherwise search is the way to go.

Gmail shortcut tip: when looking at a message, type "l" (lowercase "L"), which will popup the labels picker, then type the first letter of the tag you want to apply, then enter to apply it an "y" to archive.

Facebook groups, Asana, Fetchnotes, etc are great for cases where you can get a whole team/group/family on one or a couple communication platforms. It's much harder to get your friends to adopt a new tool, like the different pre-iMessage BBM-like services, unless you can convince them they need it for a specific task/project, or the tool has a 'cool' value-add (Voxer-walkie talkie).

The candle/light bulb analogy is the wrong analogy. The correct one is the light socket/wall outlet analogy. When electricity was first run into homes, it was all about light. So houses would have screw in bulb sockets installed. As more useful electric devices became available, people screwed adapters into the light sockets to run their devices. What they really needed were wall outlets (the Edison plugs we have in the US today).

Wall outlets didn't kill the need for light sockets, they simply split off certain functionality that wasn't best served by those sockets, because those sockets were never designed for that purpose. Light bulbs killed the candle (except emergency, devotional, and mood lighting) and I don't thing todo, calendar, task management apps will kill email, but simply return it to it original, more limited purpose.

Some good points but bad subject line. Email is the one non-broken constant I've used continuously. I started out using email, gopher, archie, usenet. Now, in the addition to "general web use" I'm still using email and, well, not much else. I'm sure there are plenty of people making good use of notetaking and to-do list apps but don't confuse it with the fundamental non-brokenness of email.

This again...

I would also say TODO lists are broken. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

I love my paper based TODO lists. I kind of have OCD and sometimes I will even write a TODO list for the things I need to do within the next hour. So for the type of user like me, nothing beats the flexibility, accessibility, and usability of a piece of paper. I don't think Fetchnotes should tackle TODO list functionality, I believe its awesome powers lies within long-term note taking.

Why email is broken: author doesn't know how to organize himself

What we can do to fix it: use author's commercial web site

...great, thanks

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