Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

Oh boy, you just got another interesting email. This one's about how you can pop popcorn with a cell phone. You automatically hover your mouse cursor over the Forward button, and then suddenly you have a puzzling thought. Should I do this?

While the question may seem strange to you, it's something you should ask yourself each time you get the urge to hit the Forward button in your email program. Even though you think everyone in your address book will be just as excited by this email as you are, statistics show that's not the case. Most people delete such emails without reading them, but not before they feel varying levels of annoyance with the sender (you). They simply don't have the time to read your forwarded email, or they're not interested.

So before you hit the Forward button, ask yourself: What are the chances that most of the people in my address book will read this email? How many will be annoyed with me for sending it?