People frequently send me their pet peeves about email. And as you might imagine, I have a few complaints of my own. So rather than rant and rave another day about the productivity problem this email glut causes, I’m tossing out three tips not mentioned in previous blogs or interviews: Put the Action in the [...]
Email threatens to engulf us. Yet it’s also a boon to productivity if used efficiently. The key to making it a productivity booster rather than drain lies in a few time-saving tips I’ve discovered along the way. 1. Post It and Provide the Link or Attachment As a writer and speaker, I get the same [...]
All too often they don’t. A quick scan through the subject lines of the messages in my inbox provides very little useful information. The subject lines read… A Quick Question (They never are…) Time Sensitive (What isn’t?) May I Ask a Question? (No, I don’t have time.) Are You Available Friday at 3:00? (It depends.) [...]
CIO Tony Murabito, of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, got an earful this year when he surveyed his employees about their IT systems. Typically, employee comments focus on IT issues. This year, they focused on email irritants. One respondent’s comment summarized many: “Let’s blow up the Reply-to-All key!” If you’re equally annoyed at your coworkers for cluttering up [...]
Last night I was working late at the office, when a call came in to my extension. Thinking it might be one of our consultants stuck in an airport, victim of a cancelled flight somewhere, I answered. The stranger on the phone responded, “Uh, …oh, …it’s you. I, well, I didn’t expect you to answer. [...]
Want to test yourself for email addiction? See how many times you check your email during the Thanksgiving holiday—for business as well as personal. Like Pavlov’s dogs, you may catch yourself clicking open an email every time you hear the “ding” of your email “in-box.” That “ding” and the related chore devours about 2 hours [...]
A recent article by Dana Knight of the The Indianapolis Star ("Workplace: Your e-mail leaves room for misunderstanding") reinforces one of my golden rules of communication. **Never assume your email will be interpreted exactly as you intend.** Research published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows there is a 50 percent chance the [...]
Finally! Stats to prove my point! I’ve been on my soapbox for 25 years about using informative subject lines—whether memos, letters, or email (well, give or take a few years on the email). Opening up Entrepreneur’s April 2006 issue, I find the article “The E-mail Effect” regarding consumer habits in email campaigns (source of the [...]
Ask any ten people if they know of someone who has been terminated or an organization that has been hauled into court over an email, and at least one can cite person and case. The story usually has an unhappy ending. Here are the no-no’s: 1. Negative comments about upper management (Even if “deleted,” [...]
