E-mail Henceforth Know as E-fail

There's a growing backlash against our growing in-boxes. A new crop of entrepreneurs has sprung up with antidotes -- some of which create more e-mail.

It happened with cigarettes. It happened with red meat. And carbs. And SUVs.And now it's happening with e-mail. The preferred communication channel of millions of Americans is no longer cool.

According to a growing number of academics, “technologists" and psychologists, our dependence on e-mail -- the need to attend to a constantly beeping in-box -- is creating anxiety in the workplace, adversely affecting the ability to focus, diminishing productivity and threatening family bonds. The problem has become so severe that a new crop of entrepreneurs has sprung up with antidotes -- which sometimes involve creating more e-mail.

Technology geeks who not long ago were comparing the size of their in-boxes as a gauge of Digital Age machismo are now attempting to wean themselves from Outlook and Gmail.

Behind the e-mail backlash is a growing perception that, despite its convenience and everything positive it has brought to work and leisure, the tide has turned, and now once-friendly e-mail is a monster that's threatening to ruin our lives. “It chases you," says Natalie Firstenberg, a Los Angeles therapist who says the subject of e-mail has been coming up more and more in sessions with her clients. “There are no business hours."

Timothy Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek," says that what's wrong with e-mail is that it simulates forward motion but doesn't necessarily mean action. “E-mail is used as a self-validation tool by people to procrastinate and to re-create activity versus productivity," he says. Ferriss, who says he used to receive “close to 300 e-mails per hour," is now checking his personal account only twice a day.

Tantek Celik, a computer scientist who has worked for Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Apple Computer and Technorati, a blog search engine, proclaimed several months ago on his blog: “EMAIL shall henceforth be known as EFAIL."