I won’t rehearse the myth of Sisyphus here. But suffice it to say that I don’t agree with Camus when he concludes his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”:

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I am happy when I play Tetris although I know that that game is only about struggle that will never end. The difference is that I decide to engage in the game myself. Sisyphus had no such choice. And I can abandon Tetris at any moment, sans the grip that the game holds on my through my own competitive nature. Again Sisyphus could not end his torment on his own.

What does this have to do with email and #noemail? A wise observation by Andrew Hyde in a tweet that returns to me via Mark Suster‘s post at CloudAve.com titled Why Email May Be Draining Your Company’s Productivity is right on target.

@AndrewHyde tweets: inbox = tetris getting zero lines doesn’t win it just makes the next move easy.

Mark goes on in his article to talk about his own experiences with the illusive inbox zero and the impact of email and normalized email behaviors on his life as a VC and startup exec. Some of Mark’s insights as specific to his work (as he himself notes) but many are very useful in getting us all to do a bit more out of the (in)box thinking.

email is Tetris; not Sisyphus’ stone. There are alternatives. You can escape.