Why it’s time to rise up against the tyranny of email

As GYLES BRANDRETH is buried under an avalanche of more than 100 messages a day...

You may not have heard of Ray Tomlinson, but he has ruined my life and may also be ruining yours. Tomlinson is the American computer programmer who, in 1971, invented the email. He is dead now (he died two years ago, aged 74), but the damage he wrought lives on, and I can’t bring myself to forgive him. His invention is driving me out of my mind.

I am drowning in emails. I am overwhelmed, suffocating in a never-ending, ever-growing avalanche of electronic communication.

I can’t take any more. Seriously, I can’t. My head is about to burst.

As I write this, there are upwards of 400 emails glowering at me from the inbox. I get about 110 new ones every day. Apparently that’s the average in the modern corporate world.

Every morning, first thing, I eliminate the trash — the obvious ads, the special offers, the appeals from alumni associations that pretend they want me to be part of their ‘community’ but actually only want my cash — but I am still left with a mountain of messages demanding my attention, and I have no idea how to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Let me give you a flavour of today’s horror — does any of it feel horribly familiar to you?

First up is a girl I was at school with, who is getting in touch for the first time in 50 years.

My generation has reached retirement age and, alarmingly, there is a vast cohort of folk in their mid-60s who seem determined to fill their twilight years by getting in touch with their childhood friends. This lady — about whom I have not thought for half a century — has sent me 18 — yes 18! — long paragraphs of catch-up news, none of which is remotely interesting. ‘Delete!’ shouts my wife. ‘Agreed!’ I respond, but I don’t press the button because scrolling through the paragraphs I see that my old school mate has just been widowed and lost her daughter a couple of years ago . . . I have got to reply, haven’t I?

And there are notes from my sister and two of my children. I can’t ignore them, can I? And what’s this? ‘URGENT. HIGH PRIORITY.’

It’s no such thing, but it is a request to supply a reference for someone who worked for me ten years ago. There is a form to fill in. It runs to several pages. I can’t face it, but I will have to, won’t I?

AND this stuff from the bank I will need to look at properly, too. And this one from the guys in Sweden who are saying they can’t pay me yet for some work because the invoice I emailed to them didn’t have an IBAN number. What the hell is an IBAN number? Who will I have to email about that?

Hold on, we’re only 20 emails in. You can’t glaze over yet; we’ve barely scratched the surface. What’s next? A few invitations. Jonny Dymond, the BBC’s new royal correspondent, wants to give me lunch; a school in Essex would like me to judge their public-speaking competition; a lady from Parliament’s oral history project would like to interview me about my time as an MP (this is her eighth polite email on this subject); a wonderful charity called WIZO wants me to help out with an event in the West Midlands ...

‘Delete, delete, delete!’ cries my wife, but how can I? Each of the emails is lovely in its own way.

Because I am a reporter on The one Show on BBC1, my daily email trawl invariably includes bright ideas for possible items for the show sent in by interested viewers, none of whom seem able to express themselves concisely.

Today there’s a man who is planning to walk to the end of every pier in Britain this year, and knows that The one Show will want to film him doing so.

I have a feeling this guy has been in touch before. I am sure I told him the last time that I am just a reporter. I have no say in what’s reported. That does not appear to have put him off . . . Delete.

oh Lord, next up is one of the banes of my life: an electronic greetings card. It first came in at Christmas. It won’t go away. I press delete. It disappears. And then the next day it pops back, telling me that I haven’t opened and ‘enjoyed’ it yet.

of course, it’s a sweet thought to send me a festive message, but I simply don’t have time to open these cards, wait for them to download and then watch the snowflakes fall and the robins cheep and chirrup as I try to work out which of my Canadian cousins has sent me this.

I have a life to live and a living to earn. In the midst of all this are the work emails — the ones I want and need to receive, and do my best to prioritise.

I am not a fool. I have read all the stuff on coping with internet overload. There’s a mass of wellmeaning advice out there, and most of it boils down to following three rules:

1) Don’t check your emails constantly. I don’t. I look at them at the start of the day and again at the end, but in the hours in between I can’t think straight because I know they are still there and the mountain is growing.

2) Set a good example by replying to your emails as crisply and concisely as you can, and avoid inessential email correspondence. (I am guilty here, I know it. I was brought up to mind my manners, so when someone sends me an email saying thanks, somehow I feel compelled to send a reply saying thanks for the thanks.)

3) Triage your emails: sort them out as you go through them. Either delete them or deal with them, or pop them into a folder marked ‘defer’.

I do exactly that, and in doing so I have doubled my torment. I now have a folder bulging with deferred emails that I know I must get round to some time, as well as all the current ones demanding immediate action.

This is like Chinese water torture. As fast as you press delete, delete, defer, and clear three of the wretched things, drip, drip, drip, three more suddenly appear.

It’s not just me, of course. The world is awash with email. There are seven-and-a-half billion of us human beings on Earth right now, but between us we are exchanging more than 205 billion emails a day — that’s 2.4 million emails pinging into inboxes every single second.

The mind boggles and the heart sinks, because very few of these electronic communications can be described as things of beauty.

I remember looking forward to the postman’s knock. What would it be? A quirky card from an eccentric maiden aunt? A funny missive from my Indian pen-friend — who always covered the envelope with unusual stamps for me to add to my collection. Even a love letter, written on Basildon Bond notepaper, in a familiar hand. Ah, those were the days, my friend. We don’t have time for that sort of sentimental nonsense now. We’re all hooked on instant communication, to the extent that we no longer even lift the telephone to talk to one another.

We still have a landline but it rarely rings, and invariably when it does my wife says ‘That’ll be Nicholas Parsons’, and it is.

Nicholas is 94, and in my experience it’s only folk in their 80s and 90s who still use the telephone. The rest of us are victims of a digital addiction, transfixed by our screens. And since we take them everywhere, we can’t escape them even if we wanted to.

EMAIL isn’t simply at the heart of our universe. It is our universe. We email people instead of calling them, and each time we do so a little piece of the social fabric is pulled out.

of course, if the emails stopped I’d think I was dead. I hate them, but I need them, too.

They are a proof that I am alive and someone wants me. They make me feel important and popular, but at the same time — as you can tell — they are driving me out of my mind.

I am like Sisyphus, the tragic king of Corinth in Greek mythology, who was fated to push an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, repeating the same action, day in, day out, for all eternity.

I can see no way to break the spiral. I am in torment. I’d ask for your help, except you’d have to send it to me by email.