Managing email
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"One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with."
Marshall McLuhan
Email is the default tool of business communication, whether we like it or not. And we appear to like it. Google wave's courageous attempt to replace it with something else failed. Instead, every day, our e-mail inboxes are more inundated.
Yet many complain about email overload. Some have even declared email bankruptcy - rather than trying to clean up their inbox with thousands of messages, they have simply reset the counter to zero and start afresh, with a different email address.
Another approach is 'life without email' - the objective of Luis Suarez on which he reports progress regularly. Instead however he may become inundated with his various social media presences.
We're partially to blame ourselves. Email causes more email. Have you noticed that during a prolonged absence from your deske, you start to receive less messages? Less people send you email because they know you are gone, but equally as important, you have not sent email so people do not reply.
No Draconian measures are needed. Just a few basic approaches can make our lives as senders and receivers a bit easier.
(Photo by /www.flickr.com/photos/xverges/">xverges)
Marshall McLuhan
Email is the default tool of business communication, whether we like it or not. And we appear to like it. Google wave's courageous attempt to replace it with something else failed. Instead, every day, our e-mail inboxes are more inundated.
Yet many complain about email overload. Some have even declared email bankruptcy - rather than trying to clean up their inbox with thousands of messages, they have simply reset the counter to zero and start afresh, with a different email address.
Another approach is 'life without email' - the objective of Luis Suarez on which he reports progress regularly. Instead however he may become inundated with his various social media presences.
We're partially to blame ourselves. Email causes more email. Have you noticed that during a prolonged absence from your deske, you start to receive less messages? Less people send you email because they know you are gone, but equally as important, you have not sent email so people do not reply.
No Draconian measures are needed. Just a few basic approaches can make our lives as senders and receivers a bit easier.
(Photo by /www.flickr.com/photos/xverges/">xverges)
Contents
- Filtering messages
- Pattern recognition
- Addressees
- Reply or reply-to-all
- Subject lines
- Brevity pledges
- Improve productivity through gmail's canned responses
- 5 attitudes to avoid email overload
- Managing the Flow
- Inbox zero (video lecture)
- Forwarding tasks to the future
- Books on personal productivity
- Your experiences managing email
Filtering messages
Email overload results from a failure to filter. To filter information effectively as receivers, we need to clearly define our focus in function of what we try to achieve. With a very good definition of what we consider relevant, and what constitutes a distraction, we can do ruthless triage on incoming messages.
If you define spam as unwanted email, then almost all messages can be considered as spam. But sometimes email is welcome, because it is relevant and valuable. It allows the other to make progress. Wouldn't it be great to have a reputation of sending only welcome email.
If you define spam as unwanted email, then almost all messages can be considered as spam. But sometimes email is welcome, because it is relevant and valuable. It allows the other to make progress. Wouldn't it be great to have a reputation of sending only welcome email.
Pattern recognition
Addressees
Carefully pick the addressees of your message. More is definitely not better in this case. The more recipients, the less recipients will feel engaged with your message. They will conclude to let somebody else do it. Asking something from 10 people is the same as asking none. How will each recipient regard your message? Will they welcome it, or will it just add to their burden?
Reply or reply-to-all
Reply-to-all is over-used. Some email users use it automatically, without much thinking. Others abuse it for self-serving purposes. I wish email clients would require triple confirmation on reply-to-all messages. 'Reply' should be the default.
Subject lines
The subject line is an opportunity to tell what's inside your message. The principles of email marketing apply. It is the attention grabber. It should describe the content of your message. It's the place where you start your internal sales.
Yet too many times, the subject line is casually added to a carefully worded message. Even worse, sometimes it is left blank.
A portion of emails suffice with there subject line only. Use it for instant messaging through email.
Yet too many times, the subject line is casually added to a carefully worded message. Even worse, sometimes it is left blank.
A portion of emails suffice with there subject line only. Use it for instant messaging through email.
Brevity pledges
five.sentenc.es is "a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It's that simple."There are also 2, 3 and 4 sentence versions.
Improve productivity through gmail's canned responses
Gmail is a great tool to manage mail. Its many features such as labelling, automatic filtering and priority inbox do not need to be introduced. But there are also many features available through Labs which can further improve your productivity. Let me introduce one of them: canned responses.Activating this feature (through settings - Labs) inserts a menu option when you compose a new e-mail message. You can either save your current message as a new template, or use a previously saved template to start.
You can use this feature for developing a series of courtesy messages, to send to people you met at a conference or seminar. Or you can use it for developing answers to frequently asked questions.
The canned responses are listed through a simple drop-down menu, which limits its use to a few dozen templates. Possibly you can stretch the system a bit further through using prefixes in the name field for your responses. You will need to plan carefully for this, as it's easy to overwrite an existing canned response, but you cannot change its name.
Managing the Flow
We are asked to absorb even more information than ever before. Now Twitter and Facebook compete with Email and Texts for our attention, keeping us up-to-date on our friends dietary details and movie attendance second-by-second. Does all this information take a toll on your psyche or sharpen the saw? Is it a matter of finding the right tools to capture what you need, or do you just need to unplug.
Scott Hanselman - Information Overload and Managing the Flow from Øredev on Vimeo.
Inbox zero (video lecture)
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Forwarding tasks to the future
The problem with action lists is that they quickly grow out of control. Once you go beyond 50 messages (one screen), you no longer have a good oversight. If you're anything like me, messages on screen 2 can take months to make it again to the top of the stack.
So wouldn't it be great if we could send tasks to the future? We can separate our deferred tasks into immediate actions and future actions. That's exactly what Mark Hurst recommends in his book bitliteracy. His service www.goodtodo.com gives you an elegant way to forget about things by sending them forward.
However, goodtodo creates yet another system that you need to manage, and most of us already receive most work through incoming email. Enter nudgemail, a service that does the same as goodtodo, but integrates better with your email system.
With nudgemail, you do not even need an account. You simply forward messages into the future, and receive them back when you're ready for them. Then you can process them in your inbox thorugh your daily triage process.
So wouldn't it be great if we could send tasks to the future? We can separate our deferred tasks into immediate actions and future actions. That's exactly what Mark Hurst recommends in his book bitliteracy. His service www.goodtodo.com gives you an elegant way to forget about things by sending them forward.
However, goodtodo creates yet another system that you need to manage, and most of us already receive most work through incoming email. Enter nudgemail, a service that does the same as goodtodo, but integrates better with your email system.
With nudgemail, you do not even need an account. You simply forward messages into the future, and receive them back when you're ready for them. Then you can process them in your inbox thorugh your daily triage process.
Books on personal productivity
There is no shortage of books on personal productivity. Most repeat the same principles:
- Limit the number of collection points for your information and actions
- Manage the flow - keep pipelines clear
- Free your mind through rigorous use of systems
- Focus on one thing at a time
by hdkeulenaer
hdkeulenaer
B2B marketer, technology marketer, knowledge manager, strategist, small team leader, gardener, father, scholar, hobby philosopher, traveler
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