Email is where knowledge goes to die

Email is a technical marvel – perhaps the only truly distributed messaging system (in spite of Gmail’s attempts to centralize email service). Email is great for notifications, but is horrible for capturing knowledge or workflow. What is discussed is soon lost and tasks are quickly swallowed by the black hole of our inboxes. Most communication is opaque and invisible to the greater team.

There is nothing wrong with sending an email, but knowledge and decisions that come out of it must be documented. If there are tasks that still need done, these need to go into a workflow tool (Gitlab, Github, Gitea, Trello, etc).

With good documentation and workflow tools, meetings can transition from boring status reports, monologues, and work assignment to creative sessions where participants are engaged and the focus is on solving hard problems, brainstorming, and maximizing the benefits of human interaction.