電子郵件的末日開始到來

Along with global warming, the Ebola virus, and gridlock politics, this year, for me at least, something far less life- and society-threatening also spiraled out of control: email.

電子郵件雖然不會危及生命與社會，但至少對我來說，它和全球變暖、埃博拉病毒、政治僵局一樣，在今年變得有些失控。

It was long ago invented as something to make us more productive. But what productivity expert would ever say that it’s a good thing that instead of working, we now “answer email?” Or that on some days, I am wary to leave my desk to head into a meeting because it means taking my finger off the dike and knowing I will return to a flood of boldfaced new messages waiting patiently for my total attention?

人們在很久以前就發明了電子郵件這種提高人類生產效率的工具。但現在，讓我們疲累的不再是工作，而是“回覆郵件”；有的時候，我很不願離開辦公桌去開會，因爲這意味着我的雙手要離開鍵盤，而我很清楚，等我開會回來後，就會有堆積如山的新郵件耐心地等待我去耗費全部的精力來回復。考慮到這些，還有哪一位生產力專家會說電子郵件是個好東西？

Some people strive for “inbox zero.” But like many people, I now get so much spam and unsolicited pitches that if I were to adopt such a goal, I would spend the entirety of every workday doing nothing but deleting emails. To keep up with this fire-hose flow, and to make sure nothing important gets buried or falls through the cracks once it gets pushed down below the display window, I have developed an embarrassingly archaic system of keeping a pen-and-paper list of emails that need responses on a series of Post-It notes. Of course, this is beyond ridiculous. As far back as 2007, Fred Wilson famously declared “email bankruptcy.” I’m close to doing the same—and I can’t be alone.

有些人正努力實現“收件箱零郵件”，但是和許多人一樣，我的郵箱裏有非常多的垃圾郵件和來路不明的郵件，如果我要清空收件箱，那麼我每天都要把所有的工作時間都花在刪除郵件上了。爲了處理這一長列的郵件，並且爲了在舊郵件被新郵件推到顯示屏下方前不忽略任何重要信息，我已經用起了一種古老得可笑的工作方法，那就是用紙筆在一張張的便利貼上，把那些必須回覆的郵件一一記錄下來。當然了，這種做法本身並不荒謬。早在2007年，弗雷德o威爾遜就宣佈“電子郵件已死”。我也快到這個地步了，而且相信很多人也有同樣的感受。

But I may not need to. I predict that this will be the year that email alternatives finally start to gain real traction. Already, collaborative messaging systems like HipChat, Yammer, and others are taking hold (Disclosure: We use HipChat at Fortune). Slack, a new messaging and search platform, is growing by leaps and bounds. Other tools have emerged over the years, like Sanebox, Mailstrom, Inbox Pause, and Xobni (bought by Yahoo in 2013, some of its features are now folded into Yahoo Mail)—as well as software like Ommwriter and Freedom, especially popular with writers, which will disable access to the Internet for chosen periods of time. Tools like and Boomerang are gaining popularity; Microsoft just bought Acompli, a company that streamlines mobile email.

但也許我不需要。照我預測，2015年正是電子郵件的替代方案開始發展之時。HipChat、Yammer等同步信息平臺開始運作（其實《財富》雜誌也在使用HipChat），新型信息與搜索平臺Slack正在飛速發展當中。過去幾年內還涌現出了其他的工具，如Sanebox、Mailstrom、Inbox Pause和Xobni【Xobni在2013年被雅虎（Yahoo）收購，部分性能被用在雅虎郵箱上】，還有尤其在寫作者中大受歡迎的Ommwriter、Freedom等軟件，它們會在你指定的時間段裏切斷你的所有互聯網接入。、Boomerang等工具同樣逐漸獲得大衆的喜愛，微軟公司（Microsoft）不久前也收購了一家專門簡化手機郵件的公司Acompli。

Corporations have gradually been adopting stricter email policies over the years: A few years ago, Volkswagen said it would stop sending emails from its servers to company-owned BlackBerrys after the end of its workday; other companies have instilled email “amnesty” during the last two weeks of the year. In 2011, French company Atos adopted a “zero email initiative” that banned internal email altogether. It didn’t succeed entirely—nor did CEO Thierry Breton expect it to—but it cut volume by 60% and led to more effective use of the company’s internal collaborative messaging platform.

近年來，各大企業逐漸開始採取更爲嚴格的電郵政策。幾年前，大衆汽車（Volkswagen）宣佈，在非工作時間，公司的服務器不會再向所有權屬於公司的黑莓手機（BlackBerrys）發送郵件。其他公司會在每年最後兩個星期實行電郵“特赦”。2011年，法國公司Atos發起了“零郵件計劃”，禁止員工發送所有的內部郵件。雖然一如Atos首席執行官蒂埃裏o布雷頓所料，此舉並不成功，但它成功減少了60%的郵件，讓公司內部的協作式信息平臺變得更有效率。

Perhaps the biggest sign yet of the change at hand comes from Germany, which has called for an “anti-stress regulation” that would, among other things, ban employers from contacting employees after hours. Chancellor Angela Merkel has criticized the law and stopped it from moving forward for now, but German leaders have long been concerned about the growing tendency for technology to allow work to encroach on employees’ private lives.

也許改變的最大徵兆掌握在德國人的手中。德國人曾經提議通過《抗壓法規》，該法規的其中一條就是禁止公司在下班後聯繫員工。總統默克爾對此法律提出了批評，暫時禁止了這一立法進程，但是德國領導人長期以來都非常關注科技發展侵害員工私人生活的問題。

All that said, this great hope is largely the optimist in me speaking, and I give this prediction low odds compared to some of our others. As Tony Hsieh once told me, the problem with email is that it is a “good-enough” solution. He was citing a theory from the Good-to-Great guru Jim Collins that holds that a product that’s good can be the arch enemy of getting to something that’s truly great.

雖然說了這麼多，但這種殷勤寄望不過是我的樂觀想法罷了，和其他預測比起來，我覺得我的預測實現的可能性很低。著名華人企業家謝家華曾經告訴我，電子郵件的問題在於它是一個“足夠好”的解決方案。他引用了吉姆o柯林斯在《從優秀到卓越》（From Good to Great）一書中的一個理論：一款好的產品，可能會成爲我們得到一款真正偉大產品的死敵。

“Some technologies stay around just because there isn’t anything better,” Hsieh once said to me with a shrug. He’s probably right. But my hope, my wish, is that 2015 is the year truly effective email management solutions go from good to great—and that email volume goes from crazy to sane. We’ll all be better for it.

“有些科技的存在是因爲缺少更好的科技，”謝家華曾經不無遺憾地對我這樣說。他可能是對的。但是我希望，在2015年會有真正高效的電子郵件管理解決方案面世，可以從優秀昇華到卓越，讓電郵的數量不再那麼瘋狂地增長。這對每個人來說都是一件好事。（財富中文網）