Dear Email,

We made it through the holidays together, but I think we both know that our relationship just isn’t working. As hard as this is to say—it’s over—we have to break up. We’re still going to have to see each other at work (at least for a while), so I hope this doesn’t make it weird. I still want to be friends, but it can’t be like it was.

First let me just say, E, I will always have feelings for you, and you know you’ll always have a special place in my heart. Remember when we met at Georgetown? Bradley Cooper was in our class, too, but a burgeoning movie star didn’t interest me—you were my college sweetheart. I could hardly keep my fingers away from you. I was always racing to the computer lab and logging into gusun.georgetown.edu to see what messages I’d gotten from you.

It was such an exciting time. I mean, you completely changed my life!

Once I graduated, you even helped me get my first job. Granted, HTML helped a bit, too, but you were the one who got the message out.

Then things started to change between us. I can’t put a precise date on it. I think it was around the time you got hooked up with spam and Marketers Without Morals that things started to go downhill.

Also—and I know I said I forgave you for this—but remember the time you sent me that really bad virus and I lost everything on my computer? I know you didn’t mean to do that, but you did it—more than once!—and my computers were never really the same after that. The counseling we went to didn’t really help either. I’m still struggling to let go of my bitterness; those were good computers that got the virus way too young.

These days, at work and at home, you’ve become really hard to control. You overwhelm me with messages. It’s too much. Also, no matter what kind of Kaizen event or Jedi mind trick I attempt on you, you’re not the way to productivity.

There are some things about you I can never change. For instance, you’re always going to keep knowledge in a silo in my inbox—I’ll never be able to search my colleagues’ inboxes for answers to my questions and see the conversations they’ve had. Also, to find an answer to a question, I have to know where to send the email— and that’s half the battle. The problem is that when someone’s in a new job or new at an organization, they don’t know whom to email.

Although you’re not harming trees, you’re costly in other ways. Every time I send an email with an attachment, it gets copied and duplicated on servers and desktops; you’re forcing me to create an insane amount of duplication. The bottom line is that you’re not helping me be productive anymore, you’re stifling me with messages, and, frankly, you’re wasting a lot of my time. I can’t live like this anymore. There is a better way.

You should also know that I become involved with someone new. At first, we were just getting together for fun, but in October we started seeing each other at work and now I realize that enterprise social networking is the one I want to be with. It has opened my eyes to a whole new way of working and can help me be productive in ways that you never can.

I know this is painful for you. I’ll never forget the good times we shared together, but the way to my heart is not through my inbox. I think it’s best for both of us if we’re just friends from now on.

I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Andrea

A version of this letter first appeared on the author’s blog Brie Moon.