Overwhelmed by Email?

National Public Radio (NPR) Googled my blog posting called "Microsoft's Email Culture," and called to ask for an interview on how I deal with so much email.  Last week, I had a great interview with Morning Edition producer, Jim Wildman. 

Today, they ran a piece on Morning Edition, called "Overcoming E-Mail Overload at Work".  There's a link to the audio, where I speak briefly about some of the downsides of email. 

Here are some tips from Marilyn Paul, author of "It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys." 

Meet as a team to review e-mail use. Identify what works, what doesn't, and why. Create a trial period for improvement: Meet to discuss after a week.

Use subject-line protocols to speed communication: a.) No reply needed – NRN; b.) Thank you - TY; c.) Need response by date and time – NRB 10/30 3:00 pm; d.) Use subject line for whole message: Meet 10:00 10/30 Okay?

Determine who needs to be copied on what, what needs to be read, and what needs to be filed.

Keep e-mails short. Most should be no more than 1-10 sentences. Communicate your main point in the first sentence or two. Don't make readers work because you don't have time to focus.

Don't deliver bad news in an e-mail message. If it's urgent, pick up the phone. Use tone of voice to indicate concern, but not anger.

After two rounds of problem-solving on e-mail, pick up the phone.

Don't hide behind e-mail. Any sensitive communications should be done in person.

If you can't answer a request immediately, let the other party know when you can respond, or if you can't.

NO EMOTIONAL E-MAILS: To resolve a conflict, schedule a meeting or use the phone. E-mail arguments tend to be huge time-wasters. Never send a hasty, irritated response to an annoying e-mail -- jobs have been lost that way.

Comments

[Dylan Greene]

I'm totally overwhelmed with email, and try to use the phone as much as possible, but I miss having conversations in a searchable format the way I get with email.

At the end of a phone call, the conversation is lost forever. Unless somebody took *good* notes, and we all get copies of those notes, the content quickly fades into nothing.

It would be nice if every phone conversation I had was automatically dictated into OneNote for future searching!

[mike w]

I really like the point of after two rounds of problem solving via email to pick up the phone. Same goes for IM. And to turn off the notification sound. It was funny listening to the NPR piece that I alt-tabbed to Outlook to see who had emailed me a couple of times. :)

[Alain Jourdier]

Email is crucial to many of us, but intent, context, attitude, etc. are difficult, at best, to impart. I think your suggestions are very sound and believe that no matter how small a business, you need a policy/guidelines for email. Maybe we could also post those on our sites so that people know how seriously we take email "etiquette". Another differentiation from the herd.