Should you file for 'email bankruptcy?'

Peter Cohan — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:11:00 EST

If your email inbox is overflowing, you don't have to spend the next three hours responding, you can tell everyone you know that you're filing for email bankruptcy. According to today's Washington Post, that means either you'll just ask people to resend their emails if they expect a response (weak form) or you'll sign off from email altogether (strong form).

I first got exposed to email at MIT back in 1980 when it was used on a few university and military computers. I could not see declaring email bankruptcy, although I don't get that much email. However, I do have other email problems: too much spam and an unreliable Yahoo! email account.

But some people have so much email that they declare weak form email bankruptcy. For example, In April, venture capitalist Fred Wilson announced he was giving up on responding to all the email piled up in his inbox. "I am so far behind on email that I am declaring bankruptcy," he wrote. "If you've sent me an email (and you aren't my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over."

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