A recent survey showed that the average
user sends or receives and processes over 16,000 emails annually.
Think about it: we don't even eat or brush our teeth 16,000 times a year! Processing
and sending emails ineffectively can cost workplace users upwards
of three weeks of annual productivity and has people burning the midnight
oil or returning to work early from vacations just to get ahead of
their bulging in-baskets.
Here's the thing: people interact with us
the way we've taught them to interact with us. The opportunity for
us is to train people how to email us -- to adjust their
expectations to better align with the way we want to work.
Subject line
literacy: Make your
subject line crystal clear. "FYI" isn't as descriptive
as "Information on the McCormick Project's Budget."
Handling clues: Adding "no
response necessary (NRN)" or "read and delete (RND)" to
your subject lines can help clue people into what you're expecting
of them. Further, if you want it by a certain date, be sure you
tell them. Putting "respond by DATE" will let them know
you need them to take action and that you want them to put that
action in their schedule. One cautionary note here. Remember: sending a request through
email isn't the same as asking someone personally to do something for
you. They may be (gasp) on vacation, in an all day meeting or
otherwise engaged. Give them a chance to agree to your request or counteroffer
with another action or another date by adding "Pls confirm or
counter." They have other things they were doing before you
sent your mission-critical missive.
Plan ahead: When I was in college,
a friend gave me a great mug that had the words "Lack of
planning on your part does not necessarily mean an emergency on my
part." Truer words have never been written, but how does one
take the "hurry sickness" out of our reactions to email.
Once, the worst thing a co-worker could call you was "incompetent"
-- now the dreaded epithet is "unresponsive." Plan ahead
with your emails. You don't like getting emails at the last minute
with time intensive requests in them and neither do the people you
send emails to. There are very few true emergencies -- just bad
planning.
Ding! "You've Got Mail":
I studied psychology and it still astounds me how I used to stop
everything I was doing -- not matter how pressing -- to answer
that chime. Like Pavlov's favorite pup, I'd hear those sweet
sounding tones and stop to deal with whatever it was -- cheap Viagra,
a way to find my long-lost high school buddies, whatever -- as if
it was more important than the project I was working on.
Consider scheduling when you'll address your emails
and only check them when you have time to do something about what
you've read. Stopping what you're doing, glancing at the email,
thinking "I'll deal with that later" and then trying to
get back into the flow only hampers your productivity -- that
email is still rattling around in your head
taking up space, making it harder to focus. Turning off the email-waiting announcement
will help you keep in integrity with your commitment to stay focused on
scheduled tasks and important projects. Pavlov's pup can't
salivate if there's no bell.
Listen
to the Alex Winer's NPR E-Mail story
Post your favorite email rant to the Email
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