Email: boon or bane?

I hate to have a full inbox. I try to empty it before I go home each day. Lately I’ve been traveling a lot and not keeping pace with the inbound traffic. So I decided that today was the day. And about 600 emails later I am done. Apologies if I have been tardy in replying to you … normal service can now be resumed.

In honor of feeling as though I have achieved something …

Half a mail, half a post,
Half a tweet onward,
All in the valley of Outlook
Inbox still at six hundred.
“Forward, the PDF,
…”Charge my cost center” he said:
Into the valley of Outlook
Inbox still at six hundred.

“Forward, the meeting request”
Was there a room that’s free?
Not tho’ the organizer knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs just to hit accept,
Theirs to get fully prepp’d,
Theirs to be PowerPoint adept:
Into the valley of Outlook
Inbox still at six hundred.

Tasks to right of him,
1-on-1’s to left of him,
And spam in front of him
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with IM and SMS,
LinkedIn and Facebooked,
Into the jaws of concalls,
Into the mouth of meetings
Inbox still at six hundred.

Flash’d his smart phones there,
Flash’d his tablet without care,
Swiping and tilting through the air,
Wirelessly downloading, while
All the world wonder’d:
Could the battery last through?
Will four signal bars do?
India and China so many more
But their mail’s quality is poor
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
He’d cracked the back now Outlook
Was less than six hundred.

Check marks right of him,
Actions done to left of him,
Deleted pile behind
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm quelled with “I’m offline”,
“Out Of Office ask someone else”,
Work the priorities ignore the rest
Came thro’ the jaws of concalls
Back from the mouth of meetings,
All that was left of them,
Much less than six hundred.

What lesson he now knows why,
When the Inbox piles too high,
Most emails can be sundered.
Too many emails are hurried,
And not to be worried,
Never again six hundred

And thanks to Alfred Lord Tennyson whose immortal words inspired my own doggerel.