Help! I am buried by emails!

(and -by the way- I happen to be stepping on that important one of yours...)

Everybody seems to have this mixed rhetoric, everybody complains about how many emails they get, but they also use it in kinda fashion of "look how important I am, I get 150 emails".

I tend to measure workload more on how many I have to send, as this is a more accurate depiction on which ones are really relevant.

The truth is, it takes up a whole lot of our time everyday to sift through those messages and respond on those that are important. Anything we can do to make this task quicker and less frequent works in our benefit.

I have some suggestions to move in the right direction, some of these things are just common sense, some of them I borrowed from RFC1855 on "Netiquette".

Here I go:

• Be conservative in what you send
• Think twice on hitting "Reply all". Be toughtfull on who you copy, move away from a "Cover your ASSets" mindset. Encourage people to do the same.
• Be a man (or woman) of word. If you keep your word, people will not feel it is necessary to leave an email trail.
• Be thoughtful on who (and how) you copy. Who should receive this email and respond to it? (To) Who should just be aware? (CC) and Who should just be aware but is not part of the conversation? (BCC) Use this last one sparingly and with respect.
• Email, even when we have the Blackberry, is not instant. Allow 2 days for a response before resending an email, if your recipient is already overwhelmed, you are just making things worse. Type "URGENT" in the subject line if it is so, or pickup the phone.
• Use descriptive subject lines. If you are replying on an old message for a new topic, change the subject line.

Email is asynchronous and for medium sized messages (one page?). Use other forms of communication when you require:

• Quick answers: IM or SMS
• Decision from a group, coordination: Conference call
• An explanation that requires feedback if you are being heard: Phone, Face to face meeting
• A very long process or other that requires documentation: Make an attachment, point to a link.

Here are some good -already- old ones:

• Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture, language, and humor have different points of reference from your own. This is true also on the receiving end.
• Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU'RE SHOUTING.
• Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is an example of a smiley (Look sideways).
• Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example:

FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth
it takes to send it. It's illogical and poorly
reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me.
FLAME OFF

("The rest of the world agrees with me" ...Love it!)

Last but not least: Send less, receive less...