Tag Archives: e-mail

. . . and Your E-Mails Are Too Long.

Posted on April 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Which means I like detail and routine and ideas. I’m a high-C on the DISC profile. Which means my e-mails sometimes tend to the long side. Longer than they need to be. In retrospect I use writing to think through problems sometimes.

Then one day my boss did me a favour. He expressed his frustration with having to pick through the thicket of my thinking to figure out what I was trying to say. We were working on some mildly interesting military communications kind of stuff so there was a fair degree of thinking involved. He was a high-D type, and not much one for needing to know all the details. He usually just wanted the bottom line. If he needed to understand how we’d gotten to a particular conclusion he just called me in fora a face-to-face conversation anyway.

Where’s Your Point?

After that  I took my conclusions, recommendations, and decisions, drop them into one sentence at the beginning of my e-mail. It wasn’t exactly deliberate feedback on his part, but I found a nugget in his venting.  I realized having to dig out my point and put it at the beginning forced me to think about what that point might actually be. Even I had a hard time finding it sometimes.

E-mail is a great medium for communicating simple, non-emotional information. Beyond that it’s missing the 85% of facial expression, body language, tone of voice, and eye contact that most people use to communicate. Hilarious misunderstandings can sometimes ensue. Just ask my wife.

I’ve learned.that if my e-mail is going past a page, it’s easier to pick up the phone and talk. Or I send an e-mail asking to set up a time to talk.

Your Actions:

  • Keep your e-mails short. One page is a good rule-of-thumb.
  • Put your point at or near the beginning
  • Avoid emotional or heated discussions via e-mail. Phone or even face-to-face is best, and it’ll be faster. Really.
  • Keep your audience in mind. How do they prefer to be communicated to?

Discussion:

Ever written an e-mail that had exactly the opposite effect from that which you intended? Care to share your story? If two people share theirs on my blog, then I’ll share mine!

Other Reading

You Talk Too Much
The Lost Art of Brevity – Mike Myatt, N2Growth blog
Your Emails Are Too Long – Leo Babauta, Zen Habits blog
Quiet Leadership – Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work – by David Rock


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Posted in body language, effectiveness, email, focus, language

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E-Mail Made Simple – Simple Tricks for Getting Your E-Mail Under Control

Posted on December 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

This week’s articles are a re-blog of the year’s most popular posts. First up, simple & effective tricks for processing your e-mail: have a routine; have a process; let your computer do the work, don’t file – archive & forget. Enjoy!

I was doing some subcontractor management for a defence communications system in England a few years ago. I got to work in an interesting part of the country, and I got to work with lots of smart people. One of the smartest was the project technical lead.

He could seemingly keep a running tally in his head of many details, moving parts, schedule, staff, and cost details – all re-callable at a moment’s notice and as needed. He also had an e-mail in-box that he was quite proud of. It had over 500 unanswered e-mails. He figured that anybody had something important to tell him they would phone him or find him in his office. For him e-mail was just a search-able black box of information. Now I’m not that smart, and maybe I’m also a bit more of control freak when it comes to e-mail (although he was a control freak in other ways).

I can’t stand having any e-mail in my in-box, and I hate wasting time on “doing” e-mail. I don’t believe you can “do” e-mail, but you sure can waste time with it.

There are lots of good blog post, books, pod-casts, and web-sites that will give you advice on how to control your e-mail. I’m going to hit the highlights because I believe a one of things an outstanding manager does well is manage themselves. This includes managing their e-mail, and communicating well, which includes answering other’s questions, making decisions, and keeping up on the latest project and company statuses.

Unless you’re an eccentric genius who doesn’t need to be a good team player because he’s near the top of the class system. Then feel free to ignore this advice.

You can tame your e-mail habits, whatever they are, by:

  • Having a process,
  • Having a routine
  • Learning how your e-mail client can auto-magically file things for you
  • Not wasting time with a complicated filing system.

Have a Process

There are lots of different ways to process e-mail. It helps you decide quickly what to do with any particular message, and helps cut through the noise and lets you get to the important stuff.

Pick a process and stick to it. The best one I know is David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”, which goes something like this:

Decide what you need to do with it and do it.

  • If you can deal with it in less than two minutes, do it now. The time, energy, and mental capacity required to track this bit of trivia overwhelms the effort required to just do it now.
  • If it’s something that needs to be done on or before a particular date, put it in your calendar.
  • If it will take more than two minutes but not for a specific time, put it on your to-do list.
  • If you need to keep it for reference, file it.
  • If somebody else can or should do it, delegate it (and follow-up, but that’s a different post)
  • If it’s trash, then trash it.

Those are your only six choices. That’s it.

Have a Routine

Process your e-mail at a set time or times every day. Times that you’ve got scheduled in your calendar so you have no excuse. If you’re like me that will keep you from constantly checking your in-box. Or if you’re not like me it will help you block of the time you need to empty your in-box and return all those messages that people actually expect you, the leader, to read and give a thoughtful reply to.

And for the sake of your God or gods, if you haven’t done it already, please please please turn off the notification that makes noise and movement every time you get a new e-mail. Really? How are you going to get any work done with that thing going off all the time? Including your smart phone. Nobody you’re talking too wants to know that you’re thinking about all the e-mails you’re constantly getting. Yes, you’ll live.

Have Your Computer Do the Work

In Outlook and Gmail you can set up automatic filing or filters for incoming e-mail. This means the e-mails from your model railroad club, company newsletter, or Mustang restoration club can get put in the “Later When I Have Five Minutes to Kill At the End of the Day or on the Bus” Folder without you needing to do anything. Except set up the filter the first time.

Conversely you can set up a “Now!” folder, which your e-mail program opens to by default, for message from our boss and wife. Or both. Or either.

It’s amazing how much less intimidating and frustrating an in-box is when it’s not filled with crap, and you can focus on what’s important.

Don’t File – Archive & Forget

This is a sub-set of the last tip: let your computer do the work. Coming up with a complex, complete, and correct filing system for your e-mail is a waste of time. As long as the subject line is sufficiently descriptive you can use the search function to find anything you need. Even then, you can also search in the body of the e-mail.

You might also like:
What goes in an e-mail – and what doesn’t
Career Gotcha’s – why your corporate e-mail account is not your personal e-mail account, and why it matters
When and When Nots of E-Mail – simple tricks to reduce the distraction and time-wasting hazards of e-mail

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Posted in effeciency, effectiveness, email, GTD, hacks

Tagged , , ,

Better E-Mail Made Simple

Posted on December 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

E-mail is a great medium for communicating simple facts, figures, and actions. It is best written in short, declarative sentences. It is not best for socializing, explaining, or instructing. Especially in a work context. That’s best done face-to-face, or if need be, over the phone.

You can help other (and yourself of course) by keeping your e-mail relevant. Relevant e-mails get better results.

You may also be interested in:
E-Mail Made Simple: tricks for getting through the daily e-mail storm
Career Gotchas: guidelines for keeping your e-mail use professional
What Goes In An E-Mail: and when you shouldn’t send that pithy rocket that will make stupid people quiver in their booties.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in communications, email, focus

Tagged , ,

E-Mail Made Simple

Posted on October 11, 2010 | 3 Comments

I was doing some subcontractor management for a defence communications system in England a few years ago. I got to work in an interesting part of the country, and I got to work with lots of smart people. One of the smartest was the project technical lead.

He could seemingly keep a running tally in his head of many details, moving parts, schedule, staff, and cost details – all re-callable at a moment’s notice and as needed. He also had an e-mail in-box that he was quite proud of. It had over 500 unanswered e-mails. He figured that anybody had something important to tell him they would phone him or find him in his office. For him e-mail was just a search-able black box of information. Now I’m not that smart, and maybe I’m also a bit more of control freak when it comes to e-mail (although he was a control freak in other ways).

I can’t stand having any e-mail in my in-box, and I hate wasting time on “doing” e-mail. I don’t believe you can “do” e-mail, but you sure can waste time with it.

There are lots of good blog post, books, podcasts, and web-sites that will give you advice on how to control your e-mail. I’m going to hit the highlights because I believe a one of things an outstanding manager does well is manage themselves. This includes managing their e-mail, and communicating well, which includes answering other’s questions, making decisions, and keeping up on the latest project and company statuses.

Unless you’re an eccentric genius who doesn’t need to be a good team player because he’s near the top of the class system. Then feel free to ignore this advice.

You can tame your e-mail habits, whatever they are, by:

  • Having a process,
  • Having a routine
  • Learning how your e-mail client can auto-magically file things for you
  • Not wasting time with a complicated filing system.

Have a Process

There are lots of different ways to process e-mail. It helps you decide quickly what to do with any particular message, and helps cut through the noise and lets you get to the important stuff.

Pick a process and stick to it. The best one I know is David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”, which goes something like this:

Decide what you need to do with it and do it.

  • If you can deal with it in less than two minutes, do it now. The time, energy, and mental capacity required to track this bit of trivia overwhelms the effort required to just do it now.
  • If it’s something that needs to be done on or before a particular date, put it in your calendar.
  • If it will take more than two minutes but not for a specific time, put it on your to-do list.
  • If you need to keep it for reference, file it.
  • If somebody else can or should do it, delegate it (and follow-up, but that’s a different post)
  • If it’s trash, then trash it.

Those are your only six choices. That’s it.

Have a Routine

Process your e-mail at a set time or times every day. Times that you’ve got scheduled in your calendar so you have no excuse. If you’re like me that will keep you from constantly checking your in-box. Or if you’re not like me it will help you block of the time you need to empty your in-box and return all those messages that people actually expect you, the leader, to read and give a thoughtful reply to.

And for the sake of your God or gods, if you haven’t done it already, please please please turn off the notification that makes noise and movement every time you get a new e-mail. Really? How are you going to get any work done with that thing going off all the time? Including your smart phone. Nobody you’re talking too wants to know that you’re thinking about all the e-mails you’re constantly getting. Yes, you’ll live.

Have Your Computer Do the Work

In Outlook and Gmail you can set up automatic filing or filters for incoming e-mail. This means the e-mails from your model railroad club, company newsletter, or Mustang restoration club can get put in the “Later When I Have Five Minutes to Kill At the End of the Day or on the Bus” Folder without you needing to do anything. Except set up the filter the first time.

Conversely you can set up a “Now!” folder, which your e-mail program opens to by default, for message from our boss and wife. Or both. Or either.

It’s amazing how much less intimidating and frustrating an in-box is when it’s not filled with crap, and you can focus on what’s important.

Don’t File – Archive & Forget

Coming up with a complex, complete, and correct filing system for your e-mail is a waste of time. As long as the subject line is sufficiently descriptive you can use the search function to find anything you need. Even then, you can also search in the body of the e-mail.

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Posted in email

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