When we waste time with email because of our own actions, complaining about email doesn't make much sense. To get control of email, we have to change how we work with it. Here's Part III of a little catalog of ways to waste time with email. See "Email Antics: II," Point Lookout for December 31, 2003, for more.
- Forward off-color "humor"
- Forward tired humor
- While the more innocent and witty jokes can be relatively safe, some of what circulates is pretty old and tired. I've been receiving some items for years. Forward only the current and fresh.
- Misuse your address book
- When someone's address changes, remember to update your address book. If you have two nicknames for the same person, that's OK. But when the actual address changes, you have to remember to update all the nicknames that resolve to it. And most people forget to update at least one.
- Present a complex point-by-point rebuttal
- Email just isn't a medium that supports complicated discussions. Save it for a face-to-face conversation. See "Email Happens," Point Lookout for September 5, 2001.
- Rely on your spell checker
- Since Wasting time is OK,
but complaining bitterly
about what we ourselves
are doing isn'tmisspellings can reflect badly on the sender, you've probably turned on your spell checker. But most email spell checkers don't warn you when you've used a wrong word that's spelled correctly. Read what you've written — you never know what you'll find. - Infect your friends and colleagues with viruses
- Some viruses spread so quickly that you can't avoid passing them on, but there's no excuse for spreading an old virus. Update your virus definitions frequently.
- Omit someone important from the recipient list
- Always, always, always read the recipient list before you click Send. Remove anyone who doesn't really belong there; make sure everyone who does belong is there. Substitute selected individuals for group lists to further focus your message. See "Emailstorming."
- Mistype an email address
- Mistyping is an alternative way to omit someone from the recipient list. See above.
- Forget to click Send
- Clicking Send is an important step. Periodically check your outbox — most of us have some unsent messages. Get rid of them, either by sending them, deleting them, or filing them.
- Believe that since you received no reply, you're being ignored
- Maybe you are being ignored, but silence isn't proof, especially when email is involved. Unless you requested a "return receipt," you don't know for sure that the recipient received what you sent. Maybe you forgot to click Send. Check your outbox to see that it went out, and try resending. Feeling insulted won't help.
- Expect that email can be the primary channel of communication for a geographically dispersed team
- This is an unrealistic expectation, usually driven by hopes of limiting travel expenses. To work well together, people need to meet face-to-face occasionally. See "Dispersity Adversity," Point Lookout for November 6, 2002.
If you do some of these, and you'd like to stop, tack this list on your wall. Track how often you catch yourself doing (or not doing) them. Use the energy you get from your successes to focus attention on the ones you want to stop. First in this series Next in this series Top Next Issue
Are you so buried in email that you don't even have time to delete your spam? Do you miss important messages? So many of the problems we have with email are actually within our power to solve, if we just realize the consequences of our own actions. Read 101 Tips for Writing and Managing Email to learn how to make peace with your inbox. Order Now!
And if you have organizational responsibility, you can help transform the culture to make more effective use of email. You can reduce volume while you make content more valuable. You can discourage email flame wars and that blizzard of useless if well-intended messages from colleagues and subordinates. Read Where There's Smoke There's Email to learn how to make email more productive at the organizational scale — and less dangerous. Order Now!
Reader Comments
- Bob Leigh
- In many cases, getting the return receipt back only indicates that a computer received what you sent. Which computer? It might be a department-wide or company-wide mail server, or it might be the computer on the recipient's desk. But getting the receipt back does not tell you whether or not the recipient actually opened or read what you sent.
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
- Four Popular Ways to Mismanage Layoffs: I
- When layoffs are necessary, the problems they are meant to address are sometimes exacerbated by mismanagement
of the layoff itself. Here is Part I of a discussion of four common patterns of mismanagement, and some
suggestions for those managers and other employees who recognize the patterns in their own companies.
- Discussion Distractions: I
- Meetings could be far more productive, if only we could learn to recognize and prevent the distractions
that lead us off topic and into the woods. Here is Part I of a small catalog of distractions frequently
seen in meetings.
- Mitigating Outsourcing Risks: II
- Outsourcing internal processes exposes the organization to a special class of risks that are peculiar
to the outsourcing relationship. Here is Part II of a discussion of what some of those risks are and
what can we do about them.
- A Pain Scale for Meetings
- Most meetings could be shorter, less frequent, and more productive than they are. Part of the problem
is that we don't realize how much we do to get in our own way. If we track the incidents of dysfunctional
activity, we can use the data to spot trends and take corrective action.
- Collaborations or Cooperations?
- Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them.
Strangely, few of us have given much thought to the difference between cooperating and collaborating.
The two do differ, and the differences matter.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness, Writing and Managing Email and Virtual and Global Teams for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming April 3: Recapping Factioned Meetings
- A factioned meeting is one in which participants identify more closely with their factions, rather than with the meeting as a whole. Agreements reached in such meetings are at risk of instability as participants maneuver for advantage after the meeting. Available here and by RSS on April 3.
- And on April 10: Managing Dunning-Kruger Risk
- A cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect can create risk for organizational missions that require expertise beyond the range of knowledge and experience of decision-makers. They might misjudge the organization's capacity to execute the mission successfully. They might even be unaware of the risk of so misjudging. Available here and by RSS on April 10.
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