Email is one of the most essential tools to being proficient in today's digitally demanding world; it increases the amount of people we can be in contact with, and the speed with which we can communicate information. However convenient this may be, as the number of people we are in contact with increases, the convenience starts to turn into inconvenience. Personally, as a college student I get at least 20 emails a day from teachers, clubs, friends, etc. There is no doubt that it is a convenient way to stay posted about homework that is due for my classes and requirements for clubs, but when the emails all just pile on top of each other it becomes a hassle.
In his article "Going Postal," Tony Schwartz describes email as catering to "our desire to be productive (or at least to feel productive) and to the utterly human inclination to avoid challenging work" (394). I couldn't agree more. I will confess that when I get on my laptop when it's time to do homework, the first thing I do is check my email, because it is a way of transitioning me into doing my homework. Email isn't fun, but it does make me feel somewhat productive and gets me ready for the far less exciting task of doing homework and studying. If I had no access to email for an extended period of time, well, I would be clueless about what is going on in the clubs I am involved in, but I suppose I could get a lot more homework done without email as a distraction.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Overall, I see e-mail as a necessary distraction as well. There is no way of avoiding its use, like you said, our society has become dependent upon it. This leads to the convenient inconvenience you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI never really thought about e-mail as being a transition into doing homework; but looking at my own work habits I find myself doing the same thing. Just before I get down to the "real" work, I start checking my facebook and e-mail. Even if there is no new messages I will periodically take a break from my homework to refresh the pages. I also think that I could get a lot more homework done without e-mail as a distraction.
I really enjoyed reading your blog! I, too, have the same habit of checking my emails first before doing my homework and studying. I can't really focus on my studying if I don't check my emails first. I also agree that the convenience starts to turn into inconvenience when too many emails pile up. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I don't think it's an issue for everyone, I can certainly understand where you're coming from and that e-mail is at times a convenient distraction. I know someone who does the same thing, using e-mail to transition into homework, and it usually ends up taking him almost as much time to go through the e-mails as it does to do his homework. However, it's hard for us to imagine what it was like before e-mail, but if we could, maybe we would find that on top of homework people spent a lot of time on administrative type tasks that are now more condensed thanks to e-mail. Maybe e-mail really isn't making us too much busier, but it's just one large task in comparison to many smaller ones that we had in the past.
ReplyDelete