Penelope checks her home e-mail account regularly, and uses the company email for personal things.
Many employees make the mistake of using their business email for personal reasons. Whether it’s emailing the babysitter to check on the kids or keeping up with college buddies, personal emails are scarcely warranted from your workplace email account.
Penelope’s Antidote: Don’t do it.
A word to the wise: your employer owns your work email account, and has a legal right to every piece of information transmitted over its business network. Even if deleted, sent emails can be “mined.” In addition, remember that emails can constitute a public record; this is yet another reason not to use them to transmit sensitive, argumentative, or personal information from your work account. Even merely accessing your personal email through your business’s internet system can be dangerous, as records and logs of those transactions can be accessed by the company.
Excerpted from Inbox Detox, Acanthus Publishing, 2009
Email is here to stay. It is very quickly becoming the primary communication tool in business. And if you want to hold back your career with your email practices, here are a few hints that can help you:
1. Waste peoples’ time. The more you annoy people by creating extra work through a myriad of bonehead maneuvers like sending unnecessary emails, forgetting attachments, and inserting HUGE graphics, the less they will think of your business communications skills.
2. Send poorly written emails. Use improper grammar, spelling and punctuation. Use run on sentences.
3. Make sure you don’t use spell check.
4. Bury the point of your communication in the middle of the message. By making it very hard for people to know what it is you are trying to convey, you will be sure to make a name for yourself in business circles.
5. Forward lengthy chain emails, saying “see below.” A great way to call attention to your lack of respect for the receiver is to forward an email that has at least 10 previously forwarded emails contained in it. This forces the recipient to have to read through all 10 to try to figure out what is important.
6. Copy as many people as you can. This one is more subtle. By adding many extra recipients, you might think you’re communicating, but what you’re really doing is adding more work to peoples’ already full plates. They may not catch on to this one right away, but over time, you won’t be able to hide.
7. Gossip via email. Even though you think that your friend won’t rat you out over the gossip you sent – hey, it is a permanent record, and that “friend” could be as catty as you!
8. Put several names in the “To:” line
9. Write long and rambling emails.
10. Send emails between 1am and 5am.
Here is a response I posted to a LinkedIn question, posted by Jacob Tang. His question was, “What are the best and worst email subject lines?”
Here’s my response – post what you think, or go to LI and get in on the discussion.
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Hi Jacob,
First, the worst subject line is NO subject. It is actually kinda rude to NOT write a subject – makes the reader do even more work. Also, many spam filters filter (no subject) out, so your chances of your message getting through are reduced.
The next worst is a very general subject line, such as “Meeting” or “Girl Scouts.” What about ‘Meeting’ or ‘Girl Scouts?’ With people receiving an average of 80-160 emails daily, we need to help others triage their work.
I think some of the best subject lines are those that are very specific. e.g. “Please bring the attachment to our 2:00 Tues Staff Meeting” rather than “meeting.”
And the very best is when your message is short enough to BE the subject line, do it, and follow it with “eom” which means End of Message. Example: “Our Tuesday staff meeting has been moved from Room A to Room B. eom” Then the reader “gets” the message, and even knows he or she doesn’t hafta open it! How cool is that?
Happy emailing! Marsha http://InboxDetox.com
RePrinting: BASEX:COMMENTARY-OF-THE-WEEK BY JONATHAN B. SPIRA
E-MAIL: REPORTS OF MY DEMISE ARE PREMATURE
It is both premature and foolhardy to proclaim that e-mail’s reign as “king of communications” is over as a recent Wall Street Journal article trumpets.
Not that e-mail is the best communications medium for everything; indeed we know very well it isn’t.
Instead, e-mail has, in the past 15 years in particular, become that path of least resistance for almost everything that transpires within an organization.
Update status? Send an e-mail to a few hundred of one’s closest colleagues.
Finish a report? Send another e-mail to a few hundred of one’s closest colleagues.
The fact is that we use e-mail opportunistically rather than with an understanding as to what the impact of its use might be.
Sending that status report to those few hundred colleagues actually cost the organization ca. 24 hours in lost time when one calculates the few minutes each person spent opening the e-mail he didn’t need to receive in the first place – plus the “recovery time,” which is the time it takes to get back to where one was in the task that was interrupted.
The result of all of our communications (and it isn’t just e-mail) is Information Overload, a problem that costs the U.S. economy ca. $900 billion per annum. On August 12, Information Overload Awareness Day was observed around the world with meetings and discussions (see http://www.basexblog.com/2009/07/09/information-overload-awareness-day/).
But that’s just one day – each additional day that we don’t address the problem of Information Overload and take steps to lessen its impact costs billions.
Companies can take steps to lower their exposure to Information Overload (an article about what can be done may be found at
http://www.basexblog.com/2009/04/23/lowering-your-information-overload-exposure/)
but even raising awareness of the problem and understanding the impact of overusing such tools as e-mail can make a big difference.
This Analyst Opinion is also available online at http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/15/e-mail-reports-of-my-demise-are-premature/
Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex. He can be reached at jspira@basex.com
Many emailers think they’re expected to respond to received email messages within milliseconds. Give it a rest!
Email was never intended to be an urgent communication tool, so take the pressure off.
The strong majority of emailers, according to studies, don’t expect a response for 24 to 48 hours. Just think of this… When YOU send an email message, you have no idea whether the recipient is at his or her computer, you don’t even know whether he or she is in the office that day! My guess is that you are in that majority who’s not expecting an immediate return.
So why then, do you put unnecessary pressure on yourself to respond immediately?
Instead, group the sorting and managing of your email. See our posts Do You “Do Email” and Trouble Managing Your E-Mail? Behave Like an E-mergency Room Nurse for more information on how to do this.
In the job market? Set up a separate email address for contact with prospective employers.
Managing your first impressions is critical to your job hunt. With all the free email services out there, there’s no excuse for you to have an email address that could hurt your prospects.
Many times there is great comptetion for an open position. Everything about you and your application is fair game for pass or fail to the next step.
I’ve actually seen email addresses such as partygirl@aol, baseballmom@yahoo or vodka1@gmail.
Instead, create one such as susansmithresume@gmail or susansmith@yahoo or ssmithMBA@aol. Make it professional.
The added benefit all is that you’ll be able to keep of your career related correspondence in one place.
OK, so you’re wondering why I’m taking up blog-space for this tip. Well, there’s a good reason…
When you fail to complete a supject line, spam filters think you’re spam. And your message won’t get through. ‘Nuff said.
Need to Send Large Files by Email?
Use http://www.yousendit.com/. This is a great service that allows you to send large files, for free!
Whether your boss is a plain ol’ jerk is another story… but if your boss sends urgent emails, that behavior qualifies him or her to be deemed an “emailing jerk.”
Let’s be clear: I define an urgent email as any email message that requests or requires action within 3 hours, not three minutes.
So why does this behavior warrant such a distinctive title? Because when that boss uses email to initiate immediate action, he or she has just scared the entire department into HAVING to have their inboxes open, dinging and flashing while they work.
“So what?” cries the emailing jerk. Well that behavior has just caused the entire department to be interrupted every time an email message shows up! Let’s see… the average worker today receives anywhere from 80 to 150 emails. Hmmmm. With every interruption taking an average of 4 minutes for recovery, that is a VERY expensive “so what.”
Instead, convince the urgent emailing jerks in your office to call or visit when something is needed in less than three hours. This allows all of you to triage your email handling, and actually get some work done for a change.
8.5 x 11 Posters for You
For posters to help you promote this behavior, visit http://EganEmailSolutions.com/urgentposters.html
And, oh, if you’re a boss, and someone forwarded this to you-it wasn’t meant to describe YOU – just the other emailing jerks in your organization.
Evan gets upset easily. When he gets upset, he bangs on his keyboard. Evan sends emails that create controversy, upset others, and tear down relationships.
Evan’s Antidote: Send informational emails, not emotional ones. If angry or upset, Evan should wait til he cools off to compose the email, or to decide if it is even necessary. If he suspects that his emotions may have tarnished the message, sleep on it.
It is really important that the sender read and reread the e-mail before sending so that misinterpretation is minimized or avoided. That’s why keeping e-mails simple and informational is a very good rule to follow.
Excerpted from Inbox Detox, Acanthus Publishing, 2009
