The first e-mail rule: Touch each e-mail message but once.

Unless it is an message that you want to re-read for enjoyment, you don’t want to waste your time by reading a message multiple times.

• Delete messages straight away.

If the e-mail is going to end up deleted, it is better to delete it sooner rather than later. This minimises the risk of reading it twice, and wasting your time. I keep deleted e-mails for at least a month, which means I can recover if I do get a little over enthusiastic with the delete key.

• Quickly delete messages.

Pushing the delete idea even further, speed deleting is especially useful for junk e-mail. You don’t even need to read the whole e-mail. Delete it in 10 seconds, rather than spending a minute reading it, mulling what you would do with the ten million dollars this nice stranger if offering to transfer into your bank account from a recently deceased king/general/prince. It will win you 50 extra seconds to do something useful! Given the number of these I have been getting recently, that’s worth about an hour a week to me. A word of caution here, don’t apply this technique to emails that might not be junk, tempting as it may be.

• Minimal filing.

I still encounter people that have e-mail dutifully filed e-mails in 100 or more folders. I used to me one of these poor individuals, until I woke up one day and said “why am I spending my time like this?”. The method is rarely time efficient for two reasons:

1. The sorting of the mail is cumbersome and time consuming at this level, especially compared with how often the e-mails are retrieved.
2. E-mails rarely fit into one of these 100+ categories exclusively, and so they end up at least partially misfiled.
3. E-mail rules can automate this filing, if it is really that necessary.

It is far better to have a minimal number of folders, then use the search facility of your e-mail software to find what you need, when and if you need it. This will be more time efficient, as well as saving ware and tare on your mouse and your brain, working out how to file everything.

The second e-mail rule: Don’t leave actionable e-mails with unactionable ones

• Move it out.

Avoid storing actions in the inbox at all costs. Unless you are a very light user of e-mail, they will get buried. Although I may sometimes e-mail myself an ‘action’ from time to time, these are actioned straight away or moved to a proper action list as soon as possible. This avoids ending up having to hunt through a swathe of e-mails trying to find the one that was actionable, or even worse, completely forgetting about it.

• Action it now.

If you can action the message now, then do. It may just be a matter of a short reply or forwarding on to someone else. It is much better to do these little tasks (1-2 minutes) straight away, than run the overhead of managing them as tasks. You’ll be amazed how much you can actually do in a minute or two, and how much this simple principle de-clutters an inbox.

• Put it in the diary.

If the e-mail is going to take more than a few minutes, then write time to process it into your diary, so that you book time to deal with it, and so that you remember to deal with it. In Outlook and some other e-mail clients, you can drag the message straight into the diary. This is also useful feedback about how overloaded you are. Likewise, if the e-mail is to do with an event, meeting or something else that belongs in the diary, write it in straight away. This minimises the chances of being double booked, and the associated stress.

The third e-mail rule: E-mail unto others as you would have them e-mail unto you.

It took me a long time to get to this one. It isn’t just a moral principle, it is a way of modelling the e-mail behaviours you expect to other people. Think before forwarding. Think before replying. Would it be better to schedule a call or exchange a quick IM message? Who needs to be cc’ed, if anyone. It is amazing how effect this is, and leads on to why writing efficient e-mails is so important.

It is always good to discover new e-mail hacks, as e-mail is such a time sink for so many these days.

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Or would we be better off without it.

A number of things have put e-mail at the top of the discussion list in recent weeks, from blogs to national TV. The BBC’s Money programme covered the topic last friday (March the 7th – if you can use iPlayer link here: The Money Programme), with the accompanying news article “E-mail is ruining my life.”

Information Overload via E-Mail

Information overload is a growing problem, and e-mail is right in the middle of it. People are overloaded by their personal email, from SPAM to Facebook notifications and seemingly endless forwarded emails. Even musicians suffer from information overload these days.

It is something when it makes it on to national TV – it doesn’t seem long ago that I had to explain what email was. Now I’m helping people deal with e-mail over use. It is clearly a problem of epidemic proportions. Lots of people have been researching the issue, like Nada Kakabadse at Northampton Business School (on the lift site here). She was recently quoted in a New Scientist article on technology addiction:

“Companies offer technologies like PDAs and Blackberies and just expect people to learn how to use them. They don’t consider the possible negative sides. New technology gives a feeling of having more control, but it may be only a feeling.

We don’t want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies and respond with appropriate education and policies.”

There is the backlash, lead by people like Tim Ferris, of the 4 hour work week fame, and others, who advocate minimising e-mail use. From e-mail free days to keeping your email client shut, checking email just once or twice a day, people are trying to tame the beast.

The technology elite are moving away from e-mail to new tools like twitter and pownce to get away from the torrent that floods the inbox. Some even proclaim that email is dead (or maybe not).

The Problem with E-Mail

The reality is that there are a number of problems with how e-mail is used today. Many people use it like an instant messaging tool – sending and expecting immediate responses. This has become more common because of tools like Blackberries, which provide this experience, most of the time at least.

The nature of our psychology, combined with a Blackberry, starts to distort our world view. I had mobile e-mail for a number of years, but I don’t currently. That is very much on purpose. My out, in, then out again perspective has made me realise the pros and cons of these tools:

• It is hard to have a meaningful conversation or meeting if someone is fiddling and distracted. We aren’t wired to have two conversations at once.
• Just because email is instant for you, doesn’t make it instant for others. Instant e-mail makes us unwittingly selfish. Don’t cancel a meeting when people may already travelling there and have no access to email. If you do, at least call. Don’t expect an answer at 2am.
• Email should never be used to avoid an awkward conversation or to hold an argument. There just isn’t enough salient indicators in email to convey emotion. We have no better communication medium today than having a face to face conversation.

One of the biggest challenge with e-mail is that it has no obvious priority level. Yes, emails can be marked high or low priority, but that is rarely used well. The other issue is more around time sensitivity. One email might be something for review or information that can be tackled any time in the next few weeks. The next email might be for a call starting in 2 minutes, or to do with an urgent customer problem. Thus we are drawn in, and our time disappears to the inbox.

E-Mail Isn’t Working

To be frank, E-mail isn’t work, it is communication. It is a means, not an end. Imagine if you spent the whole day chatting on the phone. Assuming you aren’t a call centre operative, you’d probably be viewed as well below the bar from a productivity perspective. We must reconstruct our work lives so that they are not so dependant on e-mail. We can’t do this on our own, it must be done in conjunction with the community that we interactive with. Don’t worry, you’ll be joining a growing bandwagon of reformers.

Declaring e-mail bancruptcy is not the answer, but refinancing is. I’ve already written about 7 common e-mail mistakes (there are more), but let’s come at it positively. Try this:

• Turn off automatic email checking in your email client (tell me which client you are using, and I’ll tell you how to do it).
  • This stops email interrupting you (even those little pop up messages play havoc with your attention and reduce productivity).
  • You will become concious of how often you check for email
• Try using Instant Messaging or the phone instead of email.
  • Get a corporate system or try MSN or Skype.
  • But avoid getting drawn into long conversations – more on Instant Messaging.

Send Less e-mail, and you’ll get less. Now, back to some real work…

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A heavy e-mail week has lead to this post! It is finally time to write up the most common e-mail mistakes, and how not to make them, with special thanks to Chris Butler and his post on e-mail etiquette, via Twitter.

These are my own experiences, add your own to the comments.

1. Not putting a subject.
   • Blank subject lines are a productivity killer, especially if you use threading/subject sort to speed email processing.
   • FIX: Fill in the subject as the first thing you do. It will focus your mind before you write.
2. Not attaching the attachment.
   • Unless you’ve managed to do this yourself, you probably think not attaching the attachment is subtle stalling tactic. The modern equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework’.
   • FIX: Attach the file straight after typing in the subject. If you click send too soon, all you have to do is send a follow up with an explanation. Slightly less embarrassing than not attaching the file, but only just.
3. Missing someone one off of the to/cc or having the wrong person.
   • Incorrectly directed emails are a hidden productivity cost. If key people are missed off and out of the loop, incorrect decisions are made. If the wrong people are included, their time is wasted processing the email. I worked with a business once where it wasn’t unusual to have 20 or 30 people cc’d on a email. This just doesn’t seem efficient at all.
   • FIX: Look at the ‘to’ and ‘cc’ carefully. As a general rule, if it is informational for someone, put them on the ‘cc’, if action is required, add them to the ‘to’.
4. Forwarding an email with a ‘sensitive’ email trail.
   • A real corker… The number of emails I have seen that inadvertently contained company confidential or compromising information burring in the depths of the email.
   • FIX: If the email goes off of the page (length), check what is there. Should it be an email anyway?
5. Not setting context.
   • You have the context of your message, your recipients don’t, unless you give it to them. Information out of context is meaningless or misleading.
   • FIX: Take a moment to explain the context of the email, why you are sending it and a reminder or explanation of the background. It will transform the effectiveness of your email.
6. One Line E-mails.
   • Mobile e-mail devices have a lot to answer for, and this is one of them. Composing the email in the subject line isn’t quite a crime against humanity, but it is a serious breach of etiquette. How are people meant to respond? It comes across as a rude command and can easily be misunderstood.
7. No Clear Action and No Clear Information.
   • At least a few times a day, I receive an email that leaves me baffled. I don’t know what the person wanted me to do, or what they were trying to tell me. These emails are usually very long and appear to be painstakingly written.
   • FIX: Make your point, clearly. If you can’t, then pick up the phone and give the other person a chance!

Feel free to continue the list!

See also: Preventing the next foot-in-mouth outbreak.

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Foot-in-Mouth disease? The habit of saying things in an out loud voice, that should have stayed inside the brain for a few seconds of vital additional processing. I have worked with a few people that habitually spoke their thoughts out loud, accidentally. They were very entertaining, and often said exactly what other people were thinking, but not saying. This usually resulted in lots of broken ice and moved things along. However, there is a different type of foot-in-mouth, where communication doesn’t get as much thought as it needed and “comes out all wrong”.

“A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.”
- Benjamin Franklin

The quote may have been inspired during his French travels, as there is an old proverb “better a slip of the foot than a slip of the tongue”. There is even a site, The think before you send, collecting email disaster stories, complete with a hall of shame – thanks for the pointer Sam. If you trip over, you can pick yourself up. If you miscommunicate, the recovery can be a long journey. Adding email into the equation creates the ability to accidentally offend millions of people at the click of a button.

Part of the asymmetric nature of email is that it is quicker to make a mistake, than to fix it. There is no edit-undo, even a ‘recall’ function it isn’t going to save you. Make these checks before you hit send:

• Check the “to:” field. Is that the right person and address? Is that phone number going to Nigel in sales or Nigel at your competitor?
• Check the “cc:” field. Does it need a trim, or to grow?
• Check the subject. Does it have the right meaning, out of context, for the recipients?
• Check the body. One more read through. If the content is emotive or emotional, call or meet instead.

Here’s to an end to Foot-in-Mouth, as well as Foot and Mouth, disease.

(more on email mistakes here: 7 Common e-mail mistakes).

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E-mail lacks so many of the visual and auditory cues that we need to communicate effectively, yet people write less clearly and deliberately than they would in a letter.

The opportunity for mis-communication and emotional trauma is almost endless. Recently I have been comparing the organizational effectiveness of e-mail, phone calls, conference calls and face to face communication. I am sure you won’t be surprised to hear that e-mail comes out bottom in terms of results achieved against time invested.

My conclusions?

• If you can pick up the phone and get hold of the person, pick up the phone. In the long run it is actually quicker and cheaper.
• A conference call will achieve more than an email storm almost any day.
• If something has emotional element (e.g. might cause a strong emotional reaction), then the communication does not belong on email.

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The steady state of an inbox isn’t empty. It is full. Really full.

That doesn’t make me feel good. How can you fix that?

Lets look at the system and optimise it or change it! Why is it full? Well, because there’s more stuff coming in than going out. Okay. Not genius I know, but bear with me. There are two ways we can fix the problem:

LESS IN

MORE OUT

Well, less in is tricky. Have less friends/co-workers, or get ones who don’t email? May be not. Send less emails so there aren’t so many replies? May be. But that might mean being even less proactive. Not good. However, you could pick up the phone. It saves those explosive email threads that generate text at a volume of knots. Sometimes you can’t reach the person on the phone. Next solution please!

More out. Read faster? Delete faster? Actually. For me, the issue is to read less. How MANY TIMES do you look at each email in your inbox? If the answer is once, you are in great shape. If it is more than once, then you have a huge opportunity to get better results and be more efficient. Read emails once then delete , forward or reply! (or archive them, in an unstructured system, if that is what your job requires). Problem solved. For most of us, or at least for me it used to be, that any given email was read many many times. Even if we don’t reread it, we still trip over that email again and again each time we are looking for another one, and we don’t deal with it. Why? For me it is mostly these:

• This will take too long to do right now.
  • Ok. If it is really going to take that long, then put a time in the diary to process it. File the email – I drag it straight on to my outlook calendar. Or, reply to the email saying you aren’t able to commit to helping right now, if you can’t.
• Might do this later.
  • Deadly! Will you really do it laterer? Why not now? Be brutal: Delete it or do it. Done.
• Might need this one day.
  • Well, file it then, if you really must!
• Might forward this to some one.
  • Well, do it then! Right now.

OK. Hopefully we have the building blocks of a better system. Now, that should work for you – even if you use a blackberry like I did in the past. I ditched that. That’s another story. Now, just the small question of how to get from here to there. That is from the 1,000+ emails, to the empty inbox. Set a “high water mark”. Commit to having ‘n’ less emails in your inbox at the end of the day than there were at the beginning. Make sure that ‘n’ is a reasonable number. Something achievable, but enough to make a difference on those 1,000 emails within your lifetime!

The essence is this: MAKE PROGRESS. NOW!

OK. Time for me to eat my own therapy…

What’s stopping your inbox from being empty? What can you do about it?

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