More and more I find that e-mails at work are just wasted effort. I'm moving towards persistent communications like threaded discussions or public wikis. I still use email a bunch, but it's mostly just for getting immediate alerts on updates to other services. - Daniel J. Pritchett

there's almost this expectation of immediate gratification, and so someone writes an email, then chats me, walks by the cube, and SMS's me while I am responding to the email. - anna

I think a lot of people send the email for the CYA factor - cover your ass. - Shawn Farner

@Shawn: My office deletes emails every so often for sox/liability reasons. Not only is it a completely opaque communication medium, but it won't be around when I need it six months from now. I put everything useful on a shared resource. CYA emails get printed to PDF and archived if necessary. - Daniel J. Pritchett