Perhaps the most used and abused communication tool in existence today is email. Our ability to work productively would be dramatically reduced if we didn’t have access to email. However, because we have access to email our lives are constantly interrupted, often with useless pieces of information.
The key to getting the most from email is making sure you find a system that helps you stay on top of things properly and also filters out the non-important items that may cause you to switchtask.
The following are a few rules of thumb TimeGym clients have found very helpful in making email a blessing and not a curse:
- Carbon copy or CC sparingly. Recently I heard of an employee who aggravated her boss to the point of her getting fired. One of the habits she had was to almost always carbon copy her boss when sending email—perhaps in attempt to look busy. When adding people to a carbon copy list, make sure the information is truly valuable for their position and is necessary for them to do their job properly. If you do need to update a co-worker about the things you have been doing, save it for a weekly email digest or an in-person meeting.
- Be very cautious in using “Reply to All.” The Reply to All button sends an email response to everyone in the “To” and “CC” list of the original email. In general, only hit “Reply to All” when the email was meant to be a group discussion, and only if your reply is valuable and relevant to every other person listed in the email. Otherwise, you risk clogging the email inboxes of others who have no need or desire to see your response.
- Use “Blind Carbon Copy” or “BCC” for mixed groups. We have all received a funny or heartwarming email forwarded to us from a loved one. However, if you decide you absolutely cannot resist sending a picture of a kitten dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow, be sure you send it out to your recipients using “Blind Carbon Copy.” This protects the email identities of those receiving the email and helps minimize spam.
- Limit the number of topics within an email. Have you ever sent an email to someone with a series of questions only to find they responded to only three of the seventeen points you painstakingly covered? Always remember this law of email: the shorter the email, the more likely it is to be read. Try to break different concepts into different emails. If you must have multiple topics within a single email, try to break them up into short small thoughts. At the very least, be sure to use bullet points or paragraph spacing between different concepts.
- Use effective subject lines. Often I will see subject lines that are empty or are not related to the meat of the email. While this may appear quick or clever, it creates a problem later when your recipient tries to search for your conversation. Poorly written subject lines also make it harder for the person receiving the email to understand what action they need to perform. Be especially aware of the subject line if an email conversation changes course. If the conversation switches from the advertising campaign to making a new hire, take a moment to change the subject line. This will help you and your reader avoid confusion and make email retrieval easier in the future.
- Leave the history within your email. Some people choose to disable showing the previous person’s email in the history, perhaps in an attempt to reduce word clutter. The problem is this makes it difficult for someone to follow the thread of the conversation. For instance, if you write back to an email with a short response like “sounds like a good idea” but there is no history of the conversation it becomes very difficult for the recipient to know exactly what you are referring to. The recipient then may have to expend extra time and effort to go into their email history, and locate what the idea was they sent in the first place. While it may appear cluttered, always leave the history on and do not delete the sender’s previous email.
