Here is a (very) condensed list of email tips and techniques that I cover in
my coaching and talks.
When you're in a rut or feeling scrambled, scan this
to jog your memory and regroup. That's what I use it for. :-)
Email principles
- Minimize sending email.
- Minimize the number of recipients.
- Minimize how much filing you have to do.
- The more recipients, the more clear and more brief you should be.
- Make your emails as easy to read (and process) as possible.
- Emails that are easy for others to understand will be easy for you to understand later.
- Use email for what it's good for (time shifting), not what it's bad for (emergencies, emotionally charged exchanges).
- Touch an email in your inbox once. Do not read an email and then move on to
another without deciding what the first one is. Most people do this!
- Use your email - don't let it use you.
- Protect your ability to focus and help other people to protect theirs.
- Put all emails of similar type or action required together, and process them in batches.
Processing and archiving email
- Turn off any new-email sounds, pop-ups or other notifications.
- Configure your email client to check email once per hour.
- Set up the minimal filing system that works for you.
- Separate defining what each email is from doing actions associated with it.
This relieves performance anxiety.
- Process your inbox to empty at least once a day.
- Check your folders as often as you need to.
- If you are not checking a folder, stop and figure out why, and fix it.
- Set up filters to pre-process your email as much as possible.
- Read emails newest to oldest - some topics close out on their own or provide summaries that
make it unnecessary to read the others (or to read them as closely).
- For some people, it's better to always put the email into the system rather than doing it.
- For others, it's better to do the email's action if it will take only a minute or two.
- Switching from one email to another takes effort. Leverage that effort, and don't spend
your attention twice.
Dealing with a large backlog of email
- Do NOT declare email bankruptcy. Instead, use old email to train yourself to get faster.
- Create a folder for backlog ("@DMZ") and draw the line - "go forth and sin no more."
- Set up the minimal filing system that works for you.
- Set out to just process a small number (50 or 100 messages) per day.
- Sort by date (oldest and newest), size, subject, sender, recipient, thread/conversation.
- Process in 'sprints' - triage a flurry of emails, then quit.
- Just doing a few can energize you to do more of them.
- Set aside uninterrupted time; go into the office early or late if necessary. Make this
time only about processing email.
- You do not have to do the things that the emails mean that you should do.
- No replying, no saving attachments, nothing except click and drag!
- Identify patterns of action. If they are tied to sender or subject, create a rule/filter to route such emails automatically to the appropriate folder or person.
Composing and replying to email
- Send subject-only emails terminated with "(EOM)" (end of message) or "(EOT)" (end of text).
- Provide an executive summary for emails of non-trivial length.
- If your email needs a "tl;dr", consider converting it to an executive summary and placing it at the top.
- Make the subject line as briefly accurate as possible, yet descripted enough for the recipient to categorize it and understand the context.
- In general, offset questions and actions from the body of the email.
- If your email is fundamentally a question, summarize that question in the
subject line, and end the subject line with a question mark.
- Change a subject line with "[text of new subject] (was: [old subject])"
- If the subject is likely to start its own thread, send it in a separate email.
- If there are many subjects that should have simple answers, combine them into a single email.
- Front-load email conversations as much as possible to reduce iterations.
"Lunch?"
"Yes, where?"
"Larry's?"
"What time?"
"11:45?"
"OK."
can be reduced to
"Want to get lunch at Larry's at 11:45?"
"OK.".
Be bold!
Email in groups and at work
- Get together as a group to agree on how email will be used.
- Provide constructive feedback to others on good email practices.
- Encourage others to provide constructive feedback to you.
- When replying to a group, strip as much history from the thread as you can
get away with. Summarize if necessary.
- When adding a new recipient in the middle of a thread, give enough context
to save them the trouble of having to read the entire thread.
- Save your recipients some time by explaining briefly why each of them is
getting the email. Put each of these explanations on a new line, and
start each one with the recipient's name.
- Tell your group about times when you will respond to email, and when you will
be focused on other work and will not be reading email.
- Ideally, find ways to coordinate these times with your coworkers so that they
overlap.
See Resources for further email reading.