I was discussing this issue with some friends over dinner last night, and somebody mentioned that a very prominent player in SA’s social media space has this policy: any email that would take more than 30 seconds to deal with gets deleted.
I was horrified. I had written to this person on various occasions, got the “cold shoulder” and didn’t know what to think. Now I realize that since my email would have cost him more than 30 seconds of his time, it just wasn’t worth it to him. Aside from now being offended, I think the policy is rotten.
But, guess what? At least three more people have admitted to the same practice. One even said that if he has more emails in his inbox than he cares to read, he simply deletes them all, figuring that if there is an important email there, it will be resent!
Now, I don’t know about you, but my thinking is that email, despite its faults, is at least faultless in delivery. In other words, if I have sent it, you have received it. You might not have time to respond immediately, or act on it in another way, but the chances are it didn’t get lost. So, I am not resending it.
I am also not quite sure how anybody can run a business, or call themselves a communicator, based on these approaches to this essential communication tool.
Certainly, wading through email is not fun. It causes backlog, deer–in–headlight paralysis and feelings of guilt. And God knows I am no expert. I have about thirty emails in my Gmail inbox, highlighted with a star, that I must get to, but just haven’t found the time. (If you are waiting to hear from me, yours is there!)
I understand the value in responding to a 30–second–email immediately, since it is then out of the way and out of your mind. But why delete the others?
Tim Ferris, in The 4 hour work week (yeah, right) suggests we add a auto–reply saying something to the tune of : “we only read and act on emails once a week, so please be patient”. Others only access email twice per day, in the morning and before going home. Others insist on an empty inbox at all times.
I recently installed Remember the Milk application for Gmail, which does a great job keeping track of what needs to get done according to your email requests. Now, if it also actually did it, life would be good.
Spam is another problem, and one that deserves its own post. It has stopped hugely affecting me, since Gmail is excellent in catching it before it hits my overtired eyes. (Those Google guys are brilliant).
But I am not talking about spam: I am talking about genuine business and personal emails that are written by people who would like a response. I know some of you get hundreds per week. How much time does it take you to wade through them? Is it time well spent? How do you deal with the overload? Have you ever declared email bankruptcy?
While I don’t exactly follow the policy detailed here, I do not, under any circumstances, read e-mails that have the FW (or multiple FW) tags unless their from a respectable or senior person and involves a credible, business-related subject heading.
You only receive too many e-mails if you send out too many e-mails or if you are very important. If it is the latter and you do not have a secretary, then you are just an idiot…
It’s not the receiver who is to blame taking these measures (like the rule to delete all cc’s). The sender should make it a 30 seconds message. In our workshops in e-mail selfcontrol we teach the KIS principle; always start with the Keypoints of your message in the first 3 lines. Be direct, not blunt.
Follow with additional Information and close with a polite Signature (which probably will not be read).
Combined with other pragmatic tips and tricks, anyone can get control back over their email.
There’s no problem reading business related emails no matter how many they are, the problem is we spend a lot of time “logging in & out of different accounts” whether they are bank transactions, emails and most of all this “blogging” thing.It’s the one that people should be worried about, they spend more time blogging on different blogs than dealing with their “core business” i.e responding to clients, customers, staff and management
Your assumption regarding sending and delivery is not correct.
Many SA ISPs (Mweb seems to be particularly guilty) delete genuine emails before they even land on your desk in their heavy handed fight against spam.
Can we really be sure that all emails we send are actually received? I used to believe that but have had a few instances where people have phoned to follow up on an email and I genuinely didn’t receive it. Have also had problems getting emails through to certain people. I think the filtering that goes on at ISPs and by corporate network admins can easily exclude valid emails.
Most of the time, having loads of emails to deal with is a self-inflicted problem. When you send emails that are not clear as to purpose and actions required (preferably in bullet points) you end up getting more emails. When you “Reply All” without proper justification. To deal with emails, use the 4D’s of decision making: DELETE (especially when its not adding value to an objective of yours, information in it can be found elsewhere and you’ll not end up in trouble with the law if you don’t have it); DO IT (if it can be done in 2 minutes or less. This may also include the 30 seconds spent reading it); DELEGATE IT (if you have the luxury of making it someone else’s problem); DEFER IT (to a more suitable time when it is absolutely the most important thing for you to do at the time). Email is not the problem, its how you relate to it that may cause you problems…
Practise the zero inbox approach. Merlin Mann has the best advice on getting your inbox to zero. See http://www.43folders.com/meta/popular-post-list
Too much email to deal with is usually a sign of having too much to deal with generally in life. For good information on how to “Take Back Your Life” using MS Outlook to get organized and stay organized, check out the book of the same title by Sally McGhee. This amazing writer and productivity expert has very useful and practical tips and information on living the life you want using one of the most available and simple to use software out there. You can also check out http://www.mcgheepro.com for more info on this amazing methodology
1) Touch type, DVORAK if you are hardcore enough (:
2) Mutt, http://www.mutt.org, GUI’s are just too slow
3) Procmail to sort your mail
4) Chandler, http://chandlerproject.org/
..actually I use chandler and good old text files for todo lists.