Dr. Siegel, a psychologist and president of Impact Group, management consultants in Los Angeles, it seems is on a bit of a crusade. He wants there to be less e-mail in the world. So he's helping his business clients organize activities such as a "no e-mail Friday" in order to increase productivity.  (That's right: increase productivity.)

By all reports Ken Siegel can’t be accused of beating around the bush. He doesn't like e-mail.  He is quoted in the recent article as saying, "I don't even have an e-mail account.  When I tell that to the executives I work with, first they look at me with surprise, and then they look at me with envy."

"E-mail is not a communication device, it's a broadcasting device," says Siegel. "It will actually truncate communication. And in the truest sense of the word, it has become a psychological dependency. We have convinced ourselves that we can't live without it."

I think that everyone will agree e-mail takes up more and more of our time at work.  One company survey reported that e-mails sent by a company's workers were projected to increase 27 percent this year, to an average of 47 a day -- up from 37 a day in 2006. And that's not the upper ranks of this organization, where even more e-mails can accumulate.

The question ultimately becomes for all managers, "Do we really want our organization to be spending so much of its time doing something that ultimately isn't productive?"

But how can we live without it, you ask?

Take, for example, my full-time job here at Riverside County.  I get e-mails throughout the day: e-mails inviting me to become a volunteer tax preparer; e-mails from “no-name” sites regarding online job postings, for only $750, if I act fast; e-mails from two different individuals reminding me that I now have to turn in my timesheet, e-mails purportedly from high-ranking folks in Nigeria who want to give me lots of money, e-mail about ... You get the picture.

If I hired Siegel as a consultant and recited this litany, I am sure he would be smiling in recognition.  He's obviously heard this before. "And how many of those e-mails are you really glad you got," I could imagine hearing him say.

Truthfully?  Not many of them, for sure.

That's his point exactly. Siegel says people need to consider how much e-mail adds "to the value of their days." Most of the executives he works with say they spend two to three hours a day on e-mail (about 150 to 250 messages) and on average only 16 to 19 percent of those messages met the value-added criterion.

Siegel appears also blunt about another use for e-mail.

"E-mail has become the 21st century's 'cover your butt' technique of choice," he says. "It's also become the interpersonal coward's device of choice."  (Ouch… that hurts.  Guess I will have to go back to leaving voice mail messages after hours.)

People will send e-mail as a way to avoid dealing with an issue, by pointedly not dealing with it in a quick, prompt manner, he says. If you have a problem that needs to be solved quickly, e-mail is almost always the worst way to approach that solution.  (In a future blog entry I will try to review a book on this subject, Crucial Conversations, Tools for talking when stakes are high.)

Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting giving a black eye to technology as a whole, but the problem has grown worse as more and more organizations expect employees to use personal digital assistants such as Blackberrys and Treos. Once upon a time, we only had to worry about e-mail when we were at our desks. Employees report that now it follows us around, virtually tugging at their sleeves, demanding that they pay attention.

I understand from the article that when Siegel works with business executives, he tries to give them strategies to tame the digital beast and get more value from their work.  (He must have enjoyed the recent episode on television’s, “The Office” that sort of dealt with subject.) This also seems like topic Stephen Covey should wade in on, instead of time management… technology management!  It would give new meaning to the phrase “sharpen the saw.”  (Sorry, an insider’s joke… no, it has nothing to do with a movie call “Saw.”)

Well, back to the story… Thus "No e-mail Fridays" were born. But it was not a painless birth for many who tried it. In a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, training and consulting firm, supported the idea of no e-mail one day a week. But she included a warning: "When you try to take e-mail away from some users, they're going to panic."

Panic?  I would expect riots at the County Administrative Center.

It doesn’t happen much (as yet) around the County offices, but have you ever seen people with their Blackberrys? It's like watching Pavlov's dog. The moment the stimulus is given (an e-mail arrives), the response is provoked: "Must answer now!"

Siegel agrees that it's not easy. But the benefit, he says, is -- yes -- increased productivity once you get over those initial panic attacks.

He says once people can't rely on e-mail, problems are solved more quickly. An e-mail string that might bounce back and forth in six to 12 messages over a day or two sometimes can be solved with a 10-minute face-to-face meeting. And that face-to-face thing actually improves relationships.

Siegel offers other ideas in the article. One executive manager he worked with started blocking all messages on which he was cc'd. After a while, people realized that if they wanted this manager to help solve an issue, they would have to talk to him in person.

From what I can tell, he seems to know that e-mail is a part of our working world now, and there's no turning back. But he also believes that it's time we grabbed the e-mail bull by its horns and wrestle it into submission. E-mail should not dictate how we operate at work, or even at home, he says.

"E-mail is a tool with clear and viable uses and benefits," Siegel concludes in the article. "Communication isn't one of them. Businesses and individuals need to set guidelines when it should be used and when it shouldn't be used. And we'll all be better off once we do it."

You can’t directly talk back to Dr. Siegel (no e-mail address remember), but you can electronically reply to this blog.  (The web administrators e-mail me to let me know when a comment comes in, and I must admit that I haven’t been receiving many of those over the past few months.  I hope this topic has you all fired up in a frenzy of participation.  Sorry, no telephone calls please.)