I prefer the asynchronous nature of email. I can close my email client when I need to focus properly on something.

When I need a break, I can go get another mug of coffee, open the email client, and work my way through it.

This is far preferable to instant messages popping up at random times and distract me from my focus.

Of course, I can just close the IM app as well, but there is an expectation that I have to respond to an IM promptly, and not responding is far more likely to cause a problem.

After all, if it was not deemed urgent by the sender it could have been an email message instead. Of course, a lot of people just use whatever IM there is entirely instead of email removing the asynchronous option entirely,.

Nothing is perfect. You will still have people who send you an email. Then two minutes later show up, tapping you on the shoulder and asking if you saw that email they just sent.

All that is made worse by everyone sitting on tables in a giant warehouse.

With cubes, there was a slightly bigger threshold, for physically disturbing someone.

With an office and a closed door, the threshold is substantial.

I would kill for something that merged Teams and email into a single flow of messages and responses in multiple subjects and threads.

I still miss my BlackBerry 10 messaging merging email, SMS, BBM…