FourGablesGuy's Best Practice tip #1478: Don't use email clients to store your knowledge

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you were to lose all your email messages today, how high of a disaster would that be for you:

• as an employee or
  
• personally?
  

Scale where 1 is "no big deal" and 10 being "I am ruined, RUINED!!!"

If I am tempted to save an email after I have read it, I stop and think:
"Why do I want to save this? "
"Oh, it is because I will/might need this info again later."
"Well, if that is the case, it should then be put in a secure place or made into a blog post, forum post, document, etc.. on a knowledge site."

I don't always put important learned information in a blog post or in a secure archive, and sometimes I am searching my email for something that I didn't put in a place I could easily find later... However, I think the more consistently I avoid storing knowledge in my email box (either in folders, sent items, trash, etc..) the better off I will be. It takes some time up front to move knowledge to the place it belongs but it takes even more time to scour your email folders for the one bit of info out of your email-haystack when you need later. If I do have to search and find information in my email, then I always move that data into a better place, because the fact I needed the information twice indicates I will need it yet again.

In my opinion we should treat email as an ephemeral messaging tool, not as a personal knowledge compendium. So until Google Wave gets broad adoption, email is like a sticky note on your desk, neither should be used to preserve important knowledge.

Addendum: Email is a bad choice, but some do survive using it as a knowledge base tool. However, the absolute worst place to maintain important knowledge would be your IM chat history. IM chat toools are great and I use them to ask and answer questions, but I kick myself when I am looking through old chat history for a nugget of information to reuse that I neglected to preserve better. I also am frustrated when managers/coworkers repeatedly ask me questions in chat that I have answered weeks or months previously. I am trying to establish the habit to put the answers I give/receive in IM chat on a wiki or (maybe an email..) or somewhere more permanent so that I can refer back to the more stable place later. IM chat is a double-edged sword, it is fast and convenient in the short term, but you can be hurt long term by failing to capture knowledge from your chat sessions.