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"
-
There are some errors that spell checkers can't catch (yet). Don't rely on spell checking or grammar checking alone. Human-powered proofreading is still necessary. Proofread before sending.
- 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
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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:
Achieving Goals: Inspiring Passion and Action
- Achieving your goals requires both passion and action. Knowing when to emphasize passion and when to
emphasize action are the keys to managing yourself, or others, toward achievement.
Be With the Real
- When the stream of unimportant events and concerns reaches a high enough tempo, we can become so transfixed
that we lose awareness of the real and the important. Here are some suggestions for being with the Real.
The Deck Chairs of the Titanic: Task Duration
- Much of what we call work is as futile and irrelevant as rearranging the deck chairs of the
Titanic. We continue our exploration of futile and irrelevant work, this time emphasizing behaviors
that extend task duration.
How to Reject Expert Opinion: I
- When groups of decision makers confront complex problems, they sometimes choose not to consult experts
or to reject their advice. How do groups come to make these choices?
The Myth of Difficult People
- Many books and Web sites offer advice for dealing with difficult people. There are indeed some difficult
people, but are they as numerous as these books and Web sites would have us believe? I think not.
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 June 7: Toxic Disrupters: Tactics
- Some people tend to disrupt meetings. Their motives vary, but they use techniques drawn from a limited collection. Examples: they violate norms, demand attention, mess with the agenda, and sow distrust. Response begins with recognizing their tactics. Available here and by RSS on June 7.
And on June 14: Pseudo-Collaborations
- Most workplace collaborations produce results of value. But some collaborations — pseudo-collaborations — are inherently incapable of producing value, due to performance management systems, or lack of authority, or lack of access to information. Available here and by RSS on June 14.
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