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.
- 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...
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2 comments:
A few more:
Get an offline email client:
You can't do email when offline if you only rely on webmail. A good free alternative to Outlook that works in all platforms is Zimbra. Evolution is good, but the Windows port is hideous.
Setup Rules:
Most email programs have some kind of rules set. If you take a little time on the side to set these up, it will pay back dearly.
- Setup folders and a rule to automatically move messages to it. Especially good candidates for this are: Newsletters, *SOME* automatic system notifications, etc.
- Color your email. Most email programs and in particular Outlook allow to do this. This way you can tag in blue where you are on the CC line, or maybe flag red those coming from your boss.
- Extreme email. Setup an autoresponder for certain types of messages and use aliases so you can identify what the incoming emails are related to.
Last but not least. Think about the environment. Reduce your carbon footprint.
It takes the equivalent of a charcoal nugget to push 1 Megabyte of data through the Internet. A 50Mb download is almost a complete bag of charcoal that could fire up your grill and cook a meal for you.
You don't have to believe me, watch the last few minutes of this video from TED: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQDQ9rUx-6g
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