In the closed corporate environment email can be a very useful too to hide behind. By spewing out mail after mail someone can feel productive, they can feel that they have made a difference. When done on a large scale, say 200-300 messages a day this can take up a whole career. I have colleagues who spend their day Outlook or Notes, without ever actually doing anything or seeing anyone.

Since moving companies I have made deliberate efforts to keep myself off the email radar. I now get perhaps 20 emails relating to work, 10 that are filtered off into junk and 40-50 via my various other accounts. i can easily pinpoint the import mails and process them, and I am able to inbox 0 on pretty much a daily basis. Makes a hell of a difference to both my productivity and my sanity.

I love the way email can let me send people things without interrupting them but it is not a good tool for communicating anything more than bare facts, or for ensuring there is a trail of a conversation. I frequently will note the salient points of a conversation and mail it to a colleague, marked as non-urgent (If only this was easier to do in Outlook!). They know it does not require action and can safely file it and it provides some of that much needed accountability and traceability.