I agree that email is such a drain on people’s time & can simply suck the life out of you with its misuse (or even abuse!) but getting away from it is so difficult. I worked in a global worldwide organisation where email was simply the norm, it governed your workday, in a largely counter productive way. I agree to the “come & see me, give me a ring”, even “let’s do a teams or WhatsApp or FaceTime”. However, if you’re in the UK & it’s midnight & you should be considering bed, then do you want a call or teams from a 6pm Houston manager or a 7am Asian colleague, well I think the answer is no 🤔🤷🏻♂️. Also in the work environment I was in, everything had to be backed up by email, as “evidence”, “discussion log”, “action plan”, to ensure it was documented. Personally, I always preferred the chat & a summary email to support it, but still an absolute pain. I know people though who simply don’t answer email, with the approach of “if it’s important enough they’ll call me”, so there’s a risk of lost opportunity or this midnight calls.
I guess, in summary, there’s no one size fits all 🤷🏻♂️, which also helps us stay that 1 step ahead of AI 🤔😉🤣