You Don't Have Mail: Some Declare E-Mail Bankruptcy

Some have opted to bulk delete their e-mail or wean themselves off.

ByABC News via logo
June 17, 2007, 8:07 AM

June 17, 2007 — -- With the total number of sent e-mails increasing at a rate of up to 15 percent annually, some people are going to extremes to manage it all and others are just calling it quits.

"People really felt that e-mail is managing them, instead of the other way around," said Mike Song, an e-mail efficiency expert. "It's a real control issue."

Some folks are so inundated; they've decided to declare what's called "e-mail bankruptcy." That means choosing to delete or ignore a very large number of e-mail messages without ever reading or replying to them.

"E-mail bankruptcy occurs when someone looks at their e-mail inbox, sees 3,000 messages, and says, 'I don't have the time to get back to all these people,'" Song said. "They highlight those messages, hit delete and tell people that, 'Look, I'm not going to be getting back to you via e-mail.'"

A tech blogger, a prominent technology scholar and even techno recording artist Moby have walked way from their inbox, at least for a time.

"People are feeling like a hamster on a wheel with e-mail," Song said. "The more they get, the more they process, and the faster they run on that e-mail hamster wheel, it seems like the less they get done."

Some question whether e-mail bankruptcy is appropriate for most people. "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" decided to test the idea out on Jan D'Alessandro, a mother of two and a corporate executive who fighting to stay on top of her inbox, to see if she could go off e-mail cold turkey for two days.

"My reaction was, I can't," she said. "There's no way I can do that. I will implode, my head will pop off."

"And that's the worry -- an inbox that gets out of control," said Becky Worley, an ABC News technology consultant. "Take Jan -- 200 e-mails a day, 1,400 a week, 5,600 a month. If you fall behind, it could take over 100 hours to dig out. But there is one way to clean the slate."