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March 28, 2005
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload
Considering how much we use email to communicate, day in and day out, it would behove us to use it as effectively as possible, or we could spend our days doing nothing but reading and responding to email. I've read many articles on using email efficiently, but never found one that offered more than common sense advice.
That's why I really espcially enjoyed Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload by Steve Robbins.
He starts by noting that he receives over 100 REAL emails daily, and that "at three minutes apiece it will take five hours just to read and respond." But let's get real, I don't know about you, but if I spent 3 minutes per email, I'd never get anything done! Perhaps that's why email communication can be frustrating...people tend to skim, me included, sometimes completely missing the critical point.
In order to get the full advantage of his suggestions, you need to get cooperation from those who send YOU email, and manage to improve THEIR email habits. For example:
Use a subject line to summarize, not describe. This tip will help you get the attention of those who are reading your missive.
Give your reader full context at the start of your message. I think this one is particularly important. I get some email messages that append 6 or 7 emails, an entire discussion. If the upshot of those emails isn't summarized, with an indication of what action the sender wants ME to take, I may have to spend 10 minutes digging through all the information to figure it out.
When you copy lots of people...mark out why each person should care. And if it's not clear in the message what the recipient is supposed to do, the work may not get done.
Or, you can make good use of his final suggestion. "Ignore it." Hmm, that's definitely tempting!
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