The asynchronous nature of email has increased productivity by allowing people to send information and ask questions 24 hours, 7 days a week. Long ago, when you had a thought or question, you’d save it up with others until you had the next meeting or phone call with a person, but now you can just shoot them a quick email and cross it off your own list of things on your mind. And through the constant stream of emails, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out what’s important and what’s not. This becomes worse when you go on vacation.

You come back from vacation and find yourself in email debt and sometimes take some more days to catch up. (I often leave my email and voicemail vacation message up for a day or two so others know I just got back and hopefully assume that I’m likely still catching up.) I know of people who are afraid of going on vacation or even taking a day off fearing the piles of email that will greet them when they return. I have that same problem and worse, since I have a Blackberry, I’ve often ended up checking some email while on vacation with the instinctive rationale that checking email earlier will reduce the mounds of email I’ll have to deal with when I get back.

I like the way danah boyd, famous social networks researcher extraordinaire (and fellow Cal Bear), approaches email while on vacation… Don’t get it.

I believe that email eradicates any benefits gained from taking a vacation by collecting mold and spitting it back out at you the moment you return. As such, I’ve trained my beloved INBOX to reject all email during vacation… You cannot put anything in my queue while I’m away (however lovingly you intend it) and I come home to a clean INBOX. Don’t worry… if you forget, you’ll get a nice note from my INBOX telling you to shove off…

She actually sets up the email system to delete all the email she receives (using a procmail filter rule to /dev/null) and explains further for taking a much needed break after finishing up her PhD degree and before starting her new job with Microsoft Research, even though some people have called her rude for refusing to accept email.

I was curious if danah had done anything about Facebook messages since she researches social networks and Facebook wants to take over the world’s communication mediums. Turns out that her Facebook profile photo directs people to send her email with the message: “No FB msgs; email plz.” which conveniently works with the communication sabbatical.

The email sabbatical method reduces the risk of email debt and having to declare Email Bankruptcy, something Lawrence Lessig, copyright activist and Stanford law professor, did back in 2004. Here’s what he suggests on how to erase email debt:

1. Email everyone waiting for an email from you
2. Apologize and explain politely you’re declaring bankruptcy
3. Request people to send email again if important

If that’s too much, a compromise would be the DMZ method which starts you with an empty inbox. The debt’s still there, but it’s a way to chisel away at the existing debt while trying not to get deeper in debt.

Maybe I’ll try an email sabbatical when I go on my next vacation. I’ve talked to my colleagues about this and the problem that could potentially creep up is getting cc’d on messages. (I get a lot of indirect FYI work emails). One possible solution we discussed is to archive those messages and let the senders know they’re being archived for future reference. However, if you’re being selective about which email gets through, doesn’t that just make you look bad? Plus, you’ll still need to read the cc’d messages when you return which doesn’t get rid of the stress of catching up.