email free Fridays

The more tools we have for communications beyond email, like cell phones, voice mail, text messaging, IMing (instant messaging), twitter’ing, the less effective we seem to be getting at communicating. We’re definitely more efficient, but less effective. It doesn’t help that spam emails are cluttering the email inbox — I know a noticeable portion of my time is deleting spam, even with filters in place, or finding legit emails in the Junk E-mail folder.

This excerpt is from yesterday’s USA Today, print edition, Fridays go from casual to e-mail-free: Movement aims to tame in-boxes ::

Overwhelmed by e-mail? Some professionals are fighting back by declaring e-mail-free Fridays — or by deleting their entire in-box.

Today about 150 engineers at chipmaker Intel will kick off “Zero E-mail Fridays.” E-mail isn’t forbidden, but everyone is encouraged to phone or meet face-to-face. The goal is more direct, free-flowing communication and better exchange of ideas, Intel principal engineer Nathan Zeldes says in a company blog post.