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Mass-communications technology has proliferated so rapidly that we haven’t had a chance to develop healthy protocols about when and how to use it. Now’s the time to change that To develop sustainable and rewarding relationships, it is always best to communicate in the most brain-friendly ways possible. Human contact fosters warmth and trust; distance and brevity breed contempt. So we should adopt a hierarchy of communications: face-to-face rather than e-mail; e-mail rather than mobile; mobile rather than text.

We should also be extremely wary of becoming e-bores. Is your mail, text or phone call really necessary? If you don’t pollute other people with your communications, you can feel justified in ignoring others when they have nothing to offer. For example, why respond to emails if they are only being cc’d to you? Multi cc’ers cause data pollution. If the sender really wants to know your opinion, they will ask you again individually. They probably won’t expect many replies, thanks to their subconscious understanding of the hitch-hiker rule: the more cars there are, the easier it is for the drivers to ignore the hitch-hiker.

Excerpted from pages 46 of Enough:breaking free from the world of excess by John Naish