Today emails steals too much our valuable work time. But there is always option that you won’t allow it to do that.
Emails was created to ease our everyday work. But how it got to this point? Tool itself is good but it is too easy to use badly. There is few tips how to avoid most common mistakes. And you will get along even others won’t understand same things.
Sending emails:
Dont send emails. if you send less you will receive less. You can also stop and think about your own ways how you communicate. Email is suitable for non-critical conversation between two persons. But many times something more traditional way (eg speech) or modern tool (workgroup application) can be better way to communicate.
Keep it yourself. Dont use email like you are in bar with your friends. When you are spending time with your friends it is allowed to tell bad jokes. But in emails you should stick to good quality thoughts. Use better tool. If you have good link what you want to share use Twitter. And for pictures there is Facebook. If you are in hurry use messenger, write text message or call.
Receiving emails:
Read emails on time what you have reserved for those. Remove all alerts and concentrate on emails only few times per day. And give time for them. Emails are not necessary tool for handling urgent tasks. If someone thiks so train him or her to use more suitable tool. You can read emails with modern smartphones. So there is possibility to check your messages when you are commuting between home and work. If you are checking your emails constantly you give them too much power to mandate your work.
Dont skim your emails, process them. The key for effective processing is to make something for every email right away: - remove all messages which you dont need - reply them if you can do it couple of minutes - If you need to keep that message use archives - keep in your inbox only those messages which contains something you need to do but you havent got time for them yet.
Keep your archive siple:
even you have archive your messages you should keep it simple. Create maximum 15 folders for them. if you have more you spend more time than you can save. And use search options. Current tools have good searches and they are fast. If you have old project folders or similar what you dont need everyday move them to one what containd all old folders. Remove messages. In the end only few messages are worth for saving.
Create templates. If you need to reply with similar content on many messages you should create template what contains most of information. You just need to fill missing unique information.
Dont use emails for these things. Between parenthesis are better tool for it.
- Chatting (Facebook, Google+) - Announcements (Blogs) - Links (Twitter) - Pictures (Facebook, Coocle+, Picasa, Flickr) - Sending big files (Network folder, Cloud services) - Creating text with multiple participants (Google docs, TypeWith.me) - meetings with multiple participants (Outlook Calendar, Doodle) - Group chats (Messenger, Lync, Google+, Microsoft Office Communicator) - Projects (Basecamp)
Best way for good messaging is to think like messages receiver: - Is this information necessary for me? - Is this best way to distribute this informaiton? - What is topic? - How to save responders time?
Today emails steals too much our valuable work time. But there is always option that you won’t allow it to do that.
ReplyDeleteEmails was created to ease our everyday work. But how it got to this point? Tool itself is good but it is too easy to use badly. There is few tips how to avoid most common mistakes. And you will get along even others won’t understand same things.
Sending emails:
Dont send emails. if you send less you will receive less.
You can also stop and think about your own ways how you communicate. Email is suitable for non-critical conversation between two persons. But many times something more traditional way (eg speech) or modern tool (workgroup application) can be better way to communicate.
Keep it yourself.
Dont use email like you are in bar with your friends. When you are spending time with your friends it is allowed to tell bad jokes. But in emails you should stick to good quality thoughts.
Use better tool.
If you have good link what you want to share use Twitter. And for pictures there is Facebook. If you are in hurry use messenger, write text message or call.
Receiving emails:
Read emails on time what you have reserved for those.
Remove all alerts and concentrate on emails only few times per day. And give time for them. Emails are not necessary tool for handling urgent tasks. If someone thiks so train him or her to use more suitable tool.
You can read emails with modern smartphones. So there is possibility to check your messages when you are commuting between home and work.
If you are checking your emails constantly you give them too much power to mandate your work.
Dont skim your emails, process them.
The key for effective processing is to make something for every email right away:
- remove all messages which you dont need
- reply them if you can do it couple of minutes
- If you need to keep that message use archives
- keep in your inbox only those messages which contains something you need to do but you havent got time for them yet.
Keep your archive siple:
even you have archive your messages you should keep it simple. Create maximum 15 folders for them. if you have more you spend more time than you can save. And use search options. Current tools have good searches and they are fast.
If you have old project folders or similar what you dont need everyday move them to one what containd all old folders.
Remove messages. In the end only few messages are worth for saving.
Create templates.
If you need to reply with similar content on many messages you should create template what contains most of information. You just need to fill missing unique information.
Dont use emails for these things. Between parenthesis are better tool for it.
- Chatting (Facebook, Google+)
- Announcements (Blogs)
- Links (Twitter)
- Pictures (Facebook, Coocle+, Picasa, Flickr)
- Sending big files (Network folder, Cloud services)
- Creating text with multiple participants (Google docs, TypeWith.me)
- meetings with multiple participants (Outlook Calendar, Doodle)
- Group chats (Messenger, Lync, Google+, Microsoft Office Communicator)
- Projects (Basecamp)
Best way for good messaging is to think like messages receiver:
- Is this information necessary for me?
- Is this best way to distribute this informaiton?
- What is topic?
- How to save responders time?
Smartphones are good but we can too easily let them "mandate our free time" - reading emails is way too easy in the evenings also. Ouch!
ReplyDelete