Make it easy for people to respond quickly.
By including your contact information in every sent e-mail, you make it easy for the recipient to respond to you, whether by e-mail, telephone, or post. If they have to look something up, they might “put you on hold,” and not respond in the time you expect.
Most e-mail programs have this feature. They also have the capability for you to program various auto signatures for you to use with different audiences. A standard default auto signature might look like this, and yes, it includes your email address:
Clint
Clint Smith, Vice President
ABC Company
123 Park Road
Anywhere, PA, 19500
610-xxx-xxxx
TF: 877-xxx-xxxx
F: 610-xxx-xxxx
C: 610-xxx-xxxx
clint@ abcco.com
www. abcco.com
Here’s a bonus: many people like to add your contact information into their databases, and a full auto signature makes it easy for them to do so electronically. That’s why you include the e-mail address.
Excerpted from Inbox Detox (Acanthus Publishing, 2009)
Connie Anderson of Armchair Reviews just posted her review of Inbox Detox. Here’s the link.
Or… here’s the review:
Inbox Detox…And the Habit of Email Excellence
by Marsha Egan
Published by Acanthus Publishing
Click on book
cover to order
at Amazon.com
Reviewed by Connie Anderson
Email! Some days I love it; others I hate it. We have let it run amuck and become a major infringement in our productivity.
The author/publisher of this well-done book is a professional coach in Pennsylvania. She is a leading authority on email productivity. Every business–large to one person–needs to read this book and implement her ideas for effective email use.
However you know that “you’ve got mail,” this has made us become reactive–and this can be very disruptive to our workflow and productivity. Unless you are in a back-and-forth email conversation of utmost urgency (and then a phone call might be better), we don’t have to reply that second.
In companies, IF your supervisor uses email for everything, including urgent must-do/attend meetings, it means that employees must be on top of their email all the time or suffer the consequences of this dysfunctional used of email. This can extend their day as they feel pressured to read emails in the evening.
Every time we stop to answer an email, it takes time to get back into the other project. One study estimated that the average time to return to any suspended projects was 9 minutes, 33 seconds. And this does not include the time to answer the email. Another study found that interruptions now consume 2.1 hours a day–or 28% of our workday.
Egan’s evaluations in Part 1 was mind boggling to realize all the ways we can get back in control of our email and inbox, and these changes are worth the price of the book. She recommended allowing yourself a month to change our email habits.
Her guidelines for owning your habit and managing your email are easy to implement. It just takes time and tenacity.
Egan also writes about how to write effective emails, including grammar, spelling, paragraphs, subject line, signature, etc.
I will keep and refer to Inbox Detox often–just as soon as I have my inbox, outbox and sent messages cleaned out–and I am less blogged down. Actually I have instituted some suggestions already.
Armchair Interviews says: Egan reminds us that we are in charge of our time and how we mange our email. Excellent for anyone who has email.
Author’s Web site: http://EganEmailSolutions.com
From our armchair to yours…
Interesting article! Spam costs $3 billion a year in wasted electricity alone : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/139377
Do you know this e-mailer? (names have been changed to protect the guilty)
Keyboard Kim’s fingers are locked to her keyboard. That’s all she does-tap away on those keys. No talk. No phone. Just tap tap tap tap tap tap taptap tap tap tap taptaptap.
Kim’s Antidote: Kim should call or visit when discussion is needed. Many times, face-to-face or telephone discussion is much preferred over e-mail. Simply taking the initiative to meet with a person, and getting the issue resolved with dialogue will enable Kim to convey her facial expressions, body language, and feedback that can make an interaction more useful. Kim needs to remember, e-mail can never replace conversation.
Have you ever received an Email Message like this?
Hi everyone!
I’d like to try what I’ll call a “virtual meeting”- I’d like to throw out a question and get everyone to do a “reply all” response to see if we can’t get some good ideas flowing. I know schedules are busy, and many of you haven’t been able to make recent meetings. Yet we want your ideas! So let’s give it a try with a question that’s been on the agenda, but has yet to be discussed: (blah blah blah)
=========
Did you cringe? Throw your hands up in exasperation? Another well meaning (idiot) trying to hold an email meeting. Yeeesshhh.
Many have tried to hold email “discussions.” Few have worked, and this is why… When people start to “reply all” with their comments, you start to have different threads or chains of responses. There is no one central place that people can see all of them in one shot. Additionally, if the meeting needs discussion, rather than the passing of one sided info, you miss all the benefit of voice inflection and body language, which is pretty important in motivation/building consensus, etc.
Perhaps you’ve met “Chatroom Chuck.” See our 3/24 blogpost . Chatroom C is featured in our book, Inbox Detox, along with 20 other irritating emailers.
If you can’t meet in person, the next best thing is teleconferencing/webconferencing. If you can’t/don’t wanna do that, then the next option is to set up a chat room with a service like Yahoo. Even though all the info is in one place, you may still have to sift thru separate email discussions or subjects, but at least it is all in one place.
Here’s another thought… You can set up a free wordpress or blogger blog, and have everyone sign up to receive notifications of a post. This way you have all the thoughts together, and chronologically. Food for thought. There may be other great ways to virtually collborate, we’d love to hear yours.
Bottom line – Email is the last resort, for the reasons mentioned above.
The minute you send an urgent email to a co-worker or subordinate, you’ve just infected them.
Email is a great tool. It is efficient, effective, and inexpensive! It was never created to be an urgent communication device.
People learn practices from others. You send an urgent email, they “learn” they should too.
Why is this such a problem? Because once a worker “learns” that the boss MIGHT send him or her an urgent email, he or she can no longer close down the inbox while working on something else. You have just “invited” email arrival interruptions to invade your day, and destroy any concentration you could hope to have. With the average emailer receiving between 80 and 150 emails daily, we’re talking alot of interruptions!
The antidote? Get everyone in your work group to agree to this rule:
If it is needed in less than 3 hours, pick up the phone.
Click here for three 8.5 x 11 posters…
Hey folks. This REALLY works. Try it, and let me know how it worked. And how much time you and your department, office or company reclaimed!
The main goal of proper inbox maintenance is to keep your inbox available for newly-received items. Don’t get the shakes… it IS possible, and it DOES work.
Emptying your inbox does not mean HANDLING every item immediately; it means SORTING them.
By flushing your inbox each time you open it, you will be able to clearly label items, find them more easily, and respond appropriately to messages when the time is right. This way, you also avoid a serious accumulation of messages that need a response but ultimately get lost in the shuffle. After all, nobody wants to have to send a message that reads, “I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to respond to you; I have just been going through old e-mails and realized I’d never responded to your message.” By keeping your inbox clean and manageable, you will have a failsafe system in place to ensure that every message receives a response.
(excerpted from Inbox Detox (Acanthus Publishing, 2009))
How many times have you heard someone say, “I’ve gotta do e-mail?” Or, how many times have you said it yourself?
Consider this. E-mail itself is not a task. It delivers tasks. You don’t “do e-mail.” You go through it, read it, sort it, and manage it.
I don’t get this – “I’m gonna DO e-mail.” That’s like saying, when you go to the post office, “‘I’m gonna do mail.” Or–when you go to the grocery store, “I’m going to do groceries.”
Sure, you need to set time aside to review the new stuff in your inbox. But that is “sorting,” not “doing.” Your thoughts drive your perspectives. Maybe a shift in thinking will help.
When you shift your thinking from, “I’ve got to do e-mail,” to “I’ve got work to do” (regardless of whether it was delivered by e-mail or a visit by the boss), you are on the road to better and faster results.
Before you started noodling through all the messages that are in your inbox, try a new perspective.
Think of an emergency room intake nurse. The nurse “triages” patients based on their priority, not based on when they arrived or how quickly they can be served. Instead, patients are triaged according to what requires attention first. As an example, a person with a head injury will be seen immediately, while someone with a broken finger may wait for hours. (I know, I’ve sat there and sat there and sat there…)
Patients aren’t treated based on which injury can be handled the fastest, or in the easiest way. Patients are treated based on severity, and what is most important.This is the way we need to approach our incoming e-mail in order to take control of the neverending influx of “stuff” that shows up there…
Another thing that the e-mergency room intake nurse doesn’t do is to say, “stay right here in front of me so I can see you and be reminded to call you to see the Doctor.” He or she makes a record of each, and sorts them by priority, then “works” them in that order. Leaving all kinds of messages in your inbox is akin to the “stay right here in front of me… “example. Sort your messages into folders where you can find them, in the priority you need to work them.
You’ll be surprised at how well this works.
