Chris Bannister
My inbox is my biggest source of stress at work.
For starters, the volume of messages is untenable. As I'm a freelance writer with one email address, my inbox is a heady mix of press releases, commissions, and wedding invites.
But what I struggle with the most is how emotionally charged I find emailing. I'm either asking for money, getting rejected, or waiting for work feedback. It's an anxiety minefield.
On the other hand, you have the marvelous invention of the voice note — all the warmth and intimacy of speaking on the phone without the intrusion. I send them with joyful abandon.
So when a friend who works for a startup recently extolled the virtues of sending voice notes in Slack, I wondered if I could do the same but with email.
I wanted to see if by sending audio messages I could improve my relationship with email. Could I take the one comms method I love and use it to stop hating the other?
I spent two weeks replying to emails with voice memos to find out.
I found that the easiest way to send voice notes via Gmail was by downloading Vocal, a Chrome extension that lets you record and attach audio to emails. A microphone button appears in a draft that allows you to record. The recording is attached to your email, and the recipient can listen to it in their browser.
While this was relatively easy to do, it wasn't as seamless as sending a voice note on WhatsApp. You can also use Vocal on your phone, but I don't email on the go, so I awkwardly talked into my laptop.
My main concern was that people on the receiving end wouldn't like them. Voice notes are contentious even on WhatsApp, and while I love them, I was sending them on a platform where no one would be expecting them.
So the first couple I sent were to people I'd sent voice notes on WhatsApp or with whom I had a strong enough professional relationship that I could take the chance.
The first email voice memo went to my editor at Insider, pitching the idea for this very essay. Seeing as you're reading this now, it was a strong first attempt.
Emboldened by my early success, I decided to pitch more work this way.
Just before starting my experiment, I'd been approached by a new commercial client about some ghostwriting. They'd asked for a proposal with content ideas and how many days a month I could work on the project. I sent that over in an email.
I attached an accompanying audio message in which I talked them through my thinking and threw in a few technical terms to highlight my expertise.
I also quoted them a fee that was higher than what I usually ask for, fully expecting to get the usual pushback I get whenever I ask for money. I rerecorded the message a couple of times until I thought I sounded more confident than I felt.
Before this experiment, I'd usually do my fee negotiating over email. I tell myself it's for the paper trail, but it's actually because I get so uncomfortable doing it over the phone that I stumble over my words.
Giving a fee over voice note was a happy medium. More importantly, it worked. The client not only agreed to it but gave me more days' worth of work.
Another client works for a remote company, so I figured they'd be open to all forms of asynchronous communication. I was sending them a mid-project summary and had some feedback about how we could improve our approach; I feared it could easily be taken the wrong way without the tone of my voice. Rather than ask them to jump on a call to explain — a request that always makes me feel tense — I sent a voice note.
They emailed back to say that they loved the voice note and, more importantly, that they agreed with my notes. They asked if I was available for ongoing work with them.
From now on, I'm going to send voice notes when pitching new work.
Everyone I sent an audio message to said they'd never received one before. Perhaps the novelty is why it worked as well as it did. I landed new work without clients quibbling over my fee.
Toward the end of the experiment, however, that new-toy effect did start to wane. This might have to do with the fact that no one replied with a voice note of their own. I had a couple of calls in response, both spontaneous and scheduled. But no one sent me an audio reply via email — and it's not fun sending a voice note and getting a text back. At least my Insider editor felt bad after reading a draft of this and sent me one.
By the end of the two weeks, I'd sent six voice notes. That was significantly fewer than I'd expected, considering I send at least that many on WhatsApp before 10 a.m. each day. But I didn't find it to be such a natural fit for email. I had to face an uncomfortable truth: Voice notes will never replace email, merely occasionally complement it.
However, I was sending them not to reinvent my working day but to lessen how fraught I feel when I open my emails.
Adding in some audio made my otherwise cold inbox thaw a little.
