Martin Luther On Email
Martin Luther in 1516, before email:
“I would need almost two secretaries; I do almost nothing all day but write letters.” Luther and His Katie
, 35
How to Increase the Emotional Intelligence of Your Email Messages
A good article on the emotional intelligence of email at the 99% by Scott McDowell. Here’s the first part:
Earlier this year I attended a presentation with Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence and godfather of the field of Emotional Intelligence. According to Goleman, there’s a negativity bias to email – at the neural level.
In other words, if an email’s content is neutral, we assume the tone is negative. In face-to-face conversation, the subject matter and its emotional content is enhanced by tone of voice, facial expressions, and nonverbal cues. Not so with digital communication.
Technology creates a vacuum that we humans fill with negative emotions by default, and digital emotions can escalate quickly (see: flame wars). The barrage of email can certainly fan the flames. In an effort to be productive and succinct, our communication may be perceived as clipped, sarcastic, or rude. Imagine the repercussions for creative collaboration.
He goes on to give six tips for making sure your email messages communicate the right tone.
How to Revise an Email so People will Read It
From Harvard Business Review.
Fast Company on Conquering Your Email Inbox
A short, quick overview of some of the concepts.
Increase Your Email Productivity 500%
Good thoughts from Josh Sowin.
On Grasshoppers and Email
When I go running, there is a field on my route that is filled with grasshoppers. The field looks ordinary from a distance. But once I get to it, grasshoppers start jumping out everywhere.
The first few times that I went through it I would speed up to try and get away from them. But I could never outrun the grasshoppers. They would just jump out as I went along, regardless of how fast or slow I was going. They jumped out where I was precisely because I was there. Going faster didn’t get me past the grasshoppers; it just made them jump out sooner.
So this immediately made me think of email. Email contains a paradox, like these grasshoppers: Going faster doesn’t mean you’ll get less. In fact, it might mean that you’ll get even more, because email responds to your presence, just like the grasshoppers.
So if you try to overcome email overload by doing email faster and more often, you won’t end up getting ahead. You’ll just end up with a lot more email to keep up with.
If you want more email, that’s fine. I’m not against email, and a lot of important work gets done through it. (And I probably don’t say that enough.) But if you want to preserve a good chunk of time for other responsibilities that you (hopefully) have, then the solution is to reduce your number of email cycles.
In other words, if you want to decrease the amount of email that you have to attend to, the main solution is not to go faster.
Yes, you should go faster and be more efficient at processing your email. But if that’s all you do, you’ll just see more email coming your way than you would have before. What you need to do is both become more efficient at processing email and at the same time decrease the number of times that you check email each day.
In other words, the way to create more time for other things is to decrease the number of email cycles in your routine.
Last of all, an objection. Someone will say “but if I check email less, then I’ll be less responsive.” Well, that’s probably true. I’m not saying that you have to do this. But realize that this trade-off exists on both sides of the equation. For if you choose to be almost immediately responsive with email, then you will get less long-term and important non-email stuff done. And that’s a problem, too.
It’s really up to you. There’s not necessarily a right or wrong here. It depends upon the nature of your responsibilities, your strengths, and what your organization needs you to be focusing on. Things may also fluctuate for the same person from season to season. (And, it’s worth pointing out that you can probably find a balance that preserves a good level of responsiveness even if it is less than you might initially default to.)
You make the call. Just be aware of the likely trade-off. If you end up doing less non-email work in order to give more time and attention to email, just make sure that you are doing that on purpose rather than automatically assuming that that is the way it has to be.
For the Emails You Immediately Regret Sending
Gmail now has an “undo send” feature.
How Many Hours a Day do you Spend on Email?
I would be really interested in knowing how many hours a day everyone out there spends doing email.
How much time do you spend on email each day?
How many emails a day do you get?
And, if desired: How do you feel about that?
Using Jott to Send Emails Without Email
This is an interesting use of Jott I’ve just discovered, and which got me to sign up for their paid monthly plan (Jott used to be free, but now it isn’t).
Here’s a summary of what Jott is: Jott allows you to call a number to leave a note for yourself. The system then converts the message to text and emails it to you. You can then read your message in the email, or click to listen to it from the email as well. It is a good “capture” tool for when you are on the go or not in a place where you could write something down or enter it directly into your computer.
Jott also allows you to add additional people, so that instead of just being able to jott yourself, you can also jott the people you add. So, for example, if you have an assistant you can jott that person various to-do items that come up during the day, and she/he will receive them by email.
Now, following from that, here is the interesting use: You don’t have to limit your thinking with it to simply sending yourself and others to-do items. You can also use it as a simple and convenient method for sending just regular emails, without having to type them in your email client. This can be useful when you’re on the go, but more than that can be a way to save time — instead of writing out an email, you can just speak it into Jott and let Jott do the rest.
Another benefit is this: As I discuss elsewhere, I recommend that when you are giving focused time to a project, you focus on that project entirely and shut down your email. But sometimes, the course of your work on the project will require you to send an email — which means you’ll be opening up your email client and risk getting side tracked into handling all of your email when you intent was just to send one. Jott is a solution to this: you can now still send that email, without having to open up your email program at all.
One nuance: It could turn out to be the case that people don’t generally like receiving “voice to text” emails (although the transcription is really good, and the ability to listen may add a good personal touch). If so, then it might be good to limit this use simply to your immediate team members where everyone sees and likes the efficiency this creates for the common workflow.
OK, two nuances: Since this makes it even easier to send email, it’s possible that the result could easily be that you begin sending out an even greater proliferation of email. So it would be a good idea to be aware of that so that you don’t end up sending more email simply because it’s easier.
What if the Post Office Delivered Mail the Way Most of Us Check Email?
I know it can be iffy to compare ordinary mail to email. But, here goes.
Before delivering the mail on any given day, one of the first thing the Post Office does is sort it. Each address’s mail gets grouped together so that it can be delivered in order.
But imagine what would happen if, when the postal worker was out the door and half way to your house, they called him back and said “Oh, new mail just arrived for Fred Smith! Come back and get it so you can add it to your pile!” Since new mail is always arriving, the poor postal worker would never get to actually delivering any of the mail.
There is much wisdom in batching things. Things that make it into the batch get done with the batch. Things that arrive during or after, get done in the next batch — not added into the current batch right away.
Here’s the interesting thing: In the scenario above where the postal worker continually goes back to get the new mail, it’s not as though the mail volume is any higher. He’s not prevented from actually delivering the mail by the fact that there is “so much.” He’s prevented by his process; by his approach. In the batched approach, there is just as much mail. It just happens to actually get delivered.
I realize that there are limitations to this. But the general principle is very useful. If you check your email continually, you’ll never make progress on the other work that you have to do — or on the tasks that your email has generated which have to be done outside of email.
Is “never” an overstatement? Well, a bit. But you get the point.
An Example to Show Why You Should Not Check Email Continually
Let’s say that you are working at your home in an office or other room designated for doing some work. You realize that tomorrow is garbage day. So you empty your trash sitting beside you, go through the rest of the house and do the same, and then sit back down to work.
You jot some notes down on a piece of paper and decide you don’t need them. So you throw the paper away, into the trash can you just emptied. Do you then empty the trash can again right away? Nobody would do that. You’d never get anything done. Instead, you let the trash collect, and then empty it again at a designated time in about a week.
Yet, when it comes to email, many of us insist on “taking out the trash” continually. This amounts to a continual interruption. You wouldn’t take the trash out every time you throw something away. Likewise, don’t check your email every time something new comes in. Best of all, shut it down between those times if possible, or at least minimize the window and turn off the bell.
(Nuance: I know that there are occassions when it does pay off to keep processing new messages right away, such as when you are in the middle of a conversation thread with some folks. But I’m saying: Don’t make continual checking your ongoing, default, general mode of opeation.)
Gmail Labels Have Been Made Easier
From the Gmail blog:
One of the features that makes Gmail different is its use of labels instead of folders. Sure, labels can serve pretty much the same purpose — they can help organize mail or flag messages for follow up. And unlike with folders, messages can have several labels, so if I get an email from a friend about a trip we’re taking together, I can add both a “Friends” and a “Travel” label to it.
But it’s not always obvious how to use labels, especially for people who are new to Gmail and used to using folders, and it hasn’t helped that some common tasks have been more complicated than they should be. For instance, to move an email out of your inbox and into a label you first had to apply the label using the “More actions” menu and then click “Archive.”
Starting today [Feb 3], the buttons and menus at the top of your inbox will look a bit different:
Instead of having to first apply the label and then archive, you can just use the “Move to” button to label and archive in a single step — just like you would with a folder. If you just want to add or remove a label, use the new “Labels” button. Auto-complete works, so for those of you with a lot of labels, you can select the one you want just by typing the first couple characters.
(HT: Glenn Brooke)
How Many Times a Day Should You Check Email?
I talk about this in my post on how to get your email inbox to zero every day, but it is worth discussing again from time to time.
When it comes to checking your email, the main rule is: Do not check email continually. Most of us have lots of work to do other than email. If you are checking email continually, you are dividing your focus. As a result, your other work is going to take a lot longer. Plus, you will probably find yourself less satisfied with your day.
Therefore, I recommend checking your email at set times throughout the day. Your frequency on this will depend upon the nature of your job. It might need to be every hour, or even every half hour. Or it might be once in the morning, once before lunch, and once before going home. I usually recommend once per hour.
Each time that you check email, process it all the way to zero. Do not leave something in your inbox because you “don’t know what to do with it.” If you don’t process your email to zero each time you check it, the unprocessed emails will start to feel like loose ends that nag you throughout the day.
If an email contains a long action item, processing to zero doesn’t mean that you need to do that action right away. It means that you either need to park that email in a working folder (“answer,” “read,” or “hold”) for attention later on, or park the action on a list somewhere and the email itself in a support file (if you will need to refer to it). I give more details on how to process your email in my post on getting your email inbox to zero every day.
When you are done checking email, turn your attention back to your other work and focus on that. Make sure the bell that notifies you of new email is turned off. You won’t miss anything — when it’s time to check email again, turn your attention back to your email program and process all the new mail down to zero again. If you fear you won’t see an important email soon enough, then just increase the number of times you check email per day. But do not default back to the continual-checking-mode. Whatever you do, do not check your email continually.
When to Break the Rules with Email, 2: Email Vacations
As I discuss in my series of posts on email, one of the best practices for email management is to process your email inbox to zero every day. This is both doable and fundamental to effective workflow.
But there are times when your overall workflow is best served by taking a few days off from email — by taking an email vacation, even though you continue to do your other work during that time.
Why Email Vacations Can Be Helpful
Why would you need to take an email vacation? Well, sometimes you might have a project that is so large that it deserves concentrated focus for a period of several days. Checking your email during this period can disrupt your flow and take you out of the zone, thus diminishing your effectiveness and extending the time the project takes. Plus, email could open up a long rabbit trail that will take you away from the project entirely.
Other times, you may have just had enough and need a break. This is OK. In fact, sometimes you can find yourself in a vicious cycle where accomplishing email-related work is simply creating more work. You feel like you aren’t getting anywhere because completing things is just opening up way more loops that need to be addressed. Sometimes the best way to address that situation is to step away from email for a day or two and let things settle out.
Being productive is not about gutting out your email regardless of how you feel or what your situation is. Rather, being productive is precisely what enables you to take the time to step back, gain perspective, and take a day or two away from email. In fact, this is not only made possible by being productive, but is probably a necessary part of the foundation for remaining productive.
As I write this, this idea is beginning to feel more radical than I first thought, even though I have done this off and on for many years. It feels very strange to say “take a day or two away from email if you need.” That feels risky. And if you did it arbitrarily, it would be. So let me give you an example and then a few principles.
An Example
Here’s an example. We just moved into a new house, and so we have had all of the unpacking and organizing and various stuff that goes along with a move. So I just took a five day email vacation to finish this up as quickly as possible. (By the way, for anyone wondering from my earlier comment whether there could be any type of project that doesn’t require email, this is one example!)
The open loops involved in needing to get your house put away and office setup are the kind that create drag on your life if not dealt with quickly. So I decided it would be most effective to shut email off and get the remaining things done in 5 days rather than also do all my regular email and online stuff during that time and extend the project to 8 days or more. Also, I like being able to focus like this.
It just so happened that these last 5 days fell over the Thanksgiving holiday. So, one could object that this really wasn’t an email holiday — most people had a long weekend. But that gets to one of the key principles in all this: you need to time your email vacations strategically. I intentionally put my “email vacation” during a time when it would have minimal impact on my ongoing responsibilities. (Plus, I normally would have kept up with email at least 3 out of those 5 days, so this was a real email vacation.)
Another thing I wanted to do over the holiday was relax, and the email break served that as well. Finishing all the move-in stuff, plus keeping up with my email, would have likely meant that email would have actually taken the place of the time I needed to spend relaxing with my family.
Now, because I took 5 days away from email, I’m in a much better place to keep up with my email and ongoing responsibilities this week with minimal drag (not having all the move-in stuff hanging over my head and diverting my focus). By segmenting the last part of my move-in project from email, rather than doing both currently, both are actually accomplished more quickly.
So this email vacation was not contrary to being effective with email, but actually served that cause. And it is not contrary to the fundamental principle of processing your email to zero every day, but rather is one of the primary benefits of keeping up with email.
What Makes Email Vacations Possible
In other words, processing email to zero every day is precisely what makes email vacations possible. First, if you are current with your email, you don’t need to worry that you are forgetting about some huge task buried in your inbox. Second, because you know you’ll be getting your email right back to zero in a few days and be right back on top of things.
Best Practices for Email Vacations
Last, let me suggest a few best practices for taking email vacations. First, I already mentioned that you should time them strategically. Don’t take them arbitrarily (although sometimes you will spontaneously need to take one, which is just fine), but seek to place them in spots that will create minimal disruption.
Second, remain available by other means for important matters that are highly urgent. For example, the people you work with should know they can reach you by phone or text message whenever there is an immediate need.
Third, if you are taking more than a one-day email vacation and its during the work-week, it’s probably the best idea to create an auto response saying you’ll be away from email. I didn’t do this (sorry) because I forgot, but the fact that my 5-day email vacation was over a holiday weekend reduced the need for that.
When to Break the Rules With Email, #1
No productivity approach or email approach can always be followed perfectly. A necessary element of any good approach is the ability to adapt even when things aren’t going smoothly and you have to break the rules.
As we’ve been discussing with email, I recommend totally clearing out the working folders (“answer,” “hold,” and “read”) at least once a day. The importance of this lies in the fact that if you don’t empty them regularly, they are just going to become another open loop that stays on your mind (and you’ll fall behind).
However, one of the values of these folders is that they enable you to easily adapt to the situation when you simply don’t have time to do much email for a series of days. This happens to all of us.
It happened to me just this week. I just moved last weekend, and then immediately had to head off to a conference on Tuesday. This has made time for email very scarce.
In times like this, it’s OK to go a few days without totally clearing out each of the folders. In fact, in these situations the folders become almost more valuable. They enable you to still keep you inbox at zero (since it doesn’t have to take too long to process your email into them), and then zero in on the ones that are most important. You can then deal with the most important ones so that they don’t fall through the cracks, and leave the rest for when you do have time.
The important thing is to not let this go on for too long and not to do it too often.
That is so important that I’m going to repeat it: It’s OK to let your working folders build up for a few days, but make sure to get them cleared out again as soon as possible. If you get in the habit of letting emails sit in those folders for extended periods of time, you lose a lot of the clarity and reduction in drag that this approach brings.
I’m sitting here at the airport getting my working folders cleared out right now. Unfortunately, I had a ridiculously early flight this morning and with everything else going on just said to myself “it’s not worth it.” But the next available flight was 4 hours later — more of a delay than I would have liked. But the good thing is that this just opened up a window of time to get those working folders cleared out so I can go into the weekend back to normal.
Should You Organize Your Sent Emails?
Several people have asked this over the last few days. The short answer is that I treat sent items the same way I treat deleted items — I don’t organize them, but just let them remain in their folder permanently in the event that I need to refer to one in the future. If I do need to access one down the road, I simply use the search. If my sent items gets too full, I archive it.
If there is an email that I send that will be of long-term use, whether because it defines a policy or it articulates some thoughts that I want to keep handy, then I save the email into my “Documents” folder and organize it along with the rest of my electronic files. If it seems easier, then sometimes instead of saving the email itself, I’ll paste the contents into a Word document and then save that.
There are about two principles guiding my thinking here:
- Conservation of time. I find that the frequency with which I look back at my sent items isn’t sufficient to warrant the time to organize them.
- Consolidation of content. When there is something I will need for significant ongoing future reference, it is simpler to have all of those files in one spot rather than two. So I keep all such files in “Documents,” rather than Word/Office files in “Documents” and emails in email folders.
Here are some further thoughts on that last point: The way in which something was created (whether by email or some other program) is not relevant to the way in which it should be organized. What’s important is the content.
Keeping all like content together is more important than keeping all emails together. So long-term emails get filed in “Documents” with other Word and Excel and etc. documents that pertain to that particular department or topic. (And again, I am very, very selective about which emails I file into “Documents.”)
How to Get People to Send You Less Email
I don’t believe in being down on email and complaining about how much email we receive (although on a bad day it can be tempting). Keeping on top of your email is a way of serving people.
But, except in rare instances, email is not the primary task of your job. There are many other things you need to be doing, and email already takes up enough time. So it is smart to do what you can to reduce your email volume and thus make sure, as much as possible, that you aren’t spending unnecessary time on email.
The way to reduce email volume is simple: Send less email, send better emails, and use meetings effectively.
1. Send Less Email
As with most things in life, the first place to look is not to external factors, but to ourselves. Email tends to create more email. Send less and you will receive less.
The unfortunately titled but helpful book The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You (just ignore their advice they give on filing email) notes that this is supported by research:
Research shows that for every five emails you receive, three require a response. This means that for every five emails we send, people send back three. I call this the boomerang effect. So if you eliminate just one out of every five outgoing emails, you’ll begin to receive roughly 12% fewer emails (p. 17).
How do you send less email? Here are some things you can do.
Ask Yourself: “Is this Email Truly Necessary?”
This is the highest impact thing that you can do. I’ve been guilty of sending off emails that articulate an idea I’m half-way thinking about, only to put in motion a premature discussion that sucks up time unnecessarily. The discussion was unnecessary because the issue didn’t need to be discussed yet, and there weren’t enough details to come to an effective conclusion. The best approach in these instances is: wait.
There are lots of other types of unnecessary emails. The fundamental thing to do here is to put yourself in your recipient’s shoes. Think of all that they probably have on their plate for the day and all the other emails that they are getting. Then ask, “Is this email going to be worth their time in light of everything else that they have going on?” You might realize that the email is actually unnecessary, or that what you actually need to do is clarify and sharpen the email (that is, write a better email — on which, see below).
Limit Use of Reply All
When you are one of many recipients, your default should be to respond only to the sender, rather than to everyone. So often we do the opposite. Only hit “reply all” if you’ve consciously concluded that it is truly necessary.
Limit Use of CC:
Most “cc:’s” are impositions on people’s time. To cc: someone breaks the rule of being clear as to the purpose for which you are sending the email to the person. What is the person supposed to do with this? Just “keep it on their radar?” They have 1,000 other things going on. Often, a cc: ends up being an accidental way of “jumping the cue” (see next point).
I don’t want to say that it is never necessary to cc: someone. Just keep it to a minimum.
Don’t Jump the Cue, Except with Praise
When you are working with someone on an issue and they aren’t in line with you the way you want, don’t email their boss. Even with a simple “update.” Keep working with the person. If you do need to talk about things at a higher level, mutually agree on that.
The biggest way this mistake happens is through the cc: function. You’ve been dialoguing with person X on subject A, and after a while decide to add the person above them in the “cc:” field so they can “get up to speed” with the discussion. Don’t do this. It takes up unnecessary time on the part of the person copied, and the person you’ve been dialoguing with is not going to be too happy.
The one time that you should jump the cue is with praise. If person X has done a great job on something, then it is a great idea to email their boss and cc: them, or to email them with a cc: to their boss. This is something everyone will appreciate.
Limit Use of FYI
This is highly related to the principle of limiting the instances in which you cc: people. Many cc:’s are FYI’s, and just like most cc:’s are unnecessary, so are most FYI’s.
Now, not all FYI’s are unnecessary. You just need to do it right. Instead of forwarding someone a long discussion thread to “update them,” for example, send them a one sentence email you write yourself that gives them the essence of things.
People appreciate real updates like that — updates that truly update them in a quick sentence or two. But they don’t appreciate long discussion threads that they have to wade through in order to figure out what “update” you want them to have.
2. Send Better Emails
So the first principle of getting less emails is to send less emails. The second principle is also in your control: Send better emails.
Why We Often Don’t Send Better Emails
The biggest problem with email is that the cost to the sender is low, but the cost to the recipient is high. It takes almost no effort, for example, to type up a lengthy, 750 word email and ask the person “what do you think?” or some other action (or muddled set of multiple actions). So the sender has it easy, but the receiver might then stuck with a wall of text to read and ambiguous actions to clarify.
When the cost of something is low, you get more of it. When the cost is high, you get less of it. The problem here is that the low cost is on the receiver’s end. So the tendency is to create more emails, and the receiver then bears the cost of those. Since the cost is largely on the recipient’s end, the sender does not feel that and hence does not adjust his behavior accordingly.
How to Send Better Emails
The solution is to make a conscious attempt to think from the other’s perspective. Since you don’t bear the cost of the email, be intentional about considering the cost your email will impose on the other person.
As mentioned above, sometimes this will mean not sending the email. Many times it will mean sending a better email. I won’t go into that here since I posted on this earlier this week. So for an outline of what it means to send better emails, see “How to Write Better Emails.”
However, let me add here two things that I failed to mention in that article: The concepts of EOM and NRN.
The Concepts of EOM and NTN
First, if you can fit your whole message in your subject line, do it. Then, end the subject line with “EOM,” which means “end of message.” This indicates to your recipient that they don’t need to take the time to open the email. They’ve seen everything in the subject line. Delete and move on.
Second, start adding “NRN” at the end of your emails. “NRN” means “no reply needed.” This relieves the recipient of the burden of having to know if you expect a verification that they received your email.
For example, if you send someone a rough idea about this or that, it might be best to close with “NRN” so the person knows that you don’t expect them to take the time to build on or develop the idea. You’re just updating them on a direction of thought you are having, but there is no need to develop it yet.
Or if you send a report, there probably isn’t a need for the recipient to take the time to say “thanks, got it.” Save your recipient’s time by making crystal clear that they don’t need to do this. NRN.
3. Use Meetings Effectively
Last of all, another fundamental way to receive less emails (and send less emails!) is to use meetings effectively.
The connection between email volume and ineffective meetings does not seem to be realized very often. But one of the reasons our email volume is so high is because we are trying to take care of things by email that are better taken care of in person.
The irony is that when we are in meetings, we often feel that the meeting is “taking time away from our real work,” by which we (without knowing it) mean the time to send and receive all the emails we wouldn’t need to deal with if we were just using that meeting effectively.
Patrick Lencioni states this brilliantly in his excellent book Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (pages 251-252):
Most executives I know spend hours sending e-mail, leaving voice mail, and roaming the halls to clarify issues that should have been made clear in a meeting in the first place. [Lencioni calls this "sneaker time."] But no one accounts for this the way they do when they add up time spent in meetings.
I have no doubt that sneaker time is the most subtle, dangerous, and underestimated black hole in corporate America. …
Remarkably, because sneaker time is mixed in with everything else during the day, we fail to see it as a single category of wasted time. It never ceases to amaze me when I see executives checking their watches at the end of a meeting and lobbying the CEO for it to end so they can ‘go do some real work.’
In so many cases, the ‘real work’ they’re referring to is going back to their offices to respond to e-mail and voice mail that they’ve received only because so many people are confused about what needs to be done.
So one of the reasons that we have so much email is because we fail to use meetings effectively. Ironically, we then want to get out of meetings so that we can do all the email that wouldn’t have been necessary if we had run the meeting correctly.
There is a lot to be said about meetings, and I will be doing a bunch of posts on meetings as this blog goes on. For now, realize that one of the fundamental ways of decreasing email volume is to run better meetings.
What Tips Do You Have?
I’ve suggested three ways to reduce email volume: Send less email, write better emails, and use meetings effectively.
What are some tips you have for reducing email volume? What do you do to send less email? How do you write better emails? What things do you do that I haven’t mentioned?
Handling Email on the iPhone and Other Mobile Devices
Another one of the most common questions I received on email this week was about how to coordinate my email system from “How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day” with mobile devices like the iPhone.
The Problem
Mobile devices provide really useful portability and convenience. But they also create two challenges:
- You can’t (easily, at least) process the longer-than-two-minute emails into the working folders (action, hold, read).
- Even if you could do this easily, the nature of the situation is usually that if you are checking email on your mobile device, you probably don’t have time to process everything anyway.
And of course there are other challenges as well, such as the fact that if an email requires more than a few sentences of response, you probably don’t want to type that up on the small keyboard or screen.
The Solution
The solution comes from applying a few productivity principles.
The first principle is realism. It truly does not work well to process email on a portable device. So don’t try to do it. Recognize that mobile devices are not intended to serve as your primary tool for email. Instead, see your mobile device as a means for keeping up with important emails when you are on the go. It’s fine to go into your inbox on your mobile device, see what is most important or needs an immediate (quick) response or action, taking care of those, and leaving the rest. This is not ideal, but it is realistic.
After you do deal with an email on your mobile device, delete it right away (unless you need to file it permanently in Documents). Also delete right when you see them any emails that don’t need any attention, such as a newsletter you don’t plan to read.
The result is that you will have an inbox that now contains some half-read emails that you’ve opened, then decided to leave and move on from. This is productivity anarchy. But the key to any productivity system is for it to be flexible enough to handle the fact that things do sometimes get messy.
The important thing is simply not to leave things that way, which is the second principle. What you need to do is just continue to follow the principle of having at least one time each day — back at your computer — when you fully process your email and zero everything out. At this time you will clean up all those loose ends that you left open in your inbox on your mobile device.
You might even do this as soon as you get back to your computer. Or, you could do this first thing the following morning. The key is simply to have at least one time each day where you zero everything out. Which is exactly what I recommended in the article, whether you use a mobile device or not.
In other words, if you follow the system I outlined in the article, you don’t really need to do anything special to adapt to the mobile problem. Simply by processing all of your inbox at least once a day at your computer, you’ll clean up all the open loops left in your inbox from when you checked it on your mobile device.
This is really important, so let me restate this as clearly as I can: Don’t carry your mobile habits over to your computer when you get back. You get to “break the rules” on a mobile device because there is no other way. But once you are at your computer, you need to be right back on the wagon of processing all of your inbox each time that you process any of your inbox. You might wait to do this until the next morning, or you might do it right away when you are back at your computer, but when you go back into your inbox on your computer, process everything down to zero.
Finally, after I have my inbox back down to zero, here’s the last thing I do. I hate having that circle with a number in it show up on the Mail app on my iPhone (it just represents open loops that need to be closed). So I go into my Mail app and allow all of my inboxes on my iPhone to sync up so that my iPhone now reflects the zero inbox.
The Two Sentence Summary
Last week when a friend of mine emailed me this same question, and I sent him back a real quick paragraph summarizing the above. I just took another look at that, and I think I can boil everything down to two sentences.
Here they are: Use your iPhone to get emails that you need to keep up with because of their urgency when you’re away from your computer for the day or afternoon. But then when you’re back at your computer later that day or the next morning, clean everything up and get it to normal (that is, zero).
How to Manage Multiple Email Accounts
In my post on getting your email inbox to zero every day, I asked for readers to send in their questions about email and I would post on some of them this week. I’ve received a lot of great questions — thank you to everyone who has emailed their questions or put them in the comments. Now, it’s time to start posting on the questions.
The first question is from a reader named Mark: “Could you go into the logistics of email accounts? I am trying to whittle down to two accounts, one for work and another for personal use.” Mark then goes into some of the problems he’s encountered. Another reader also echoed the same things
Most of us probably have several email accounts, so this question is very relevant.
Here are some the key principles I recommend and which we will be discussing:
- Have as many accounts as you need but as few as you can get by with.
- Bring everything into one interface, if possible.
- When you can’t bring everything into one interface, have a regular schedule for checking all of your accounts.
- Be as disciplined with your personal email accounts as you are with your work email.
After discussing these principles, we’re going to discuss solutions to three problems:
- When an account offers free POP and forwarding, but will not forward spam (hence, some legitimate email gets caught in the spam filter and is not forwarded).
- When an account provides POP only if you pay for it.
- How to cancel an email account while minimizing problems arising from the fact that people don’t always update their address book and that you may have a lot of website usernames to update.
Email Etiquette
Zach Nielson recently had a helpful post on using email well. Most of the points go to the issue of what I would call “email etiquette.” Some of the best tips are: “don’t confront people over email,” “work to have a balance between email and personal contact,” “learn people’s style,” and “hesitate before hitting reply all.”
Most important: When sending to a large group, use blind copy.
How to Write Better Emails
A major theme of this blog is that productivity is not simply about making ourselves more productive, but making others more productive as well. Writing better emails is a big way that we can make other people’s lives a little simpler and a little better. And it will save us time as well.
Writing good emails means writing them in a way that makes it possible to understand your point right away. It means writing your email to have high impact with minimal time investment on your reader’s part.
The most influential resource on my thinking on this area is a book with the unfortunate title, The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You. Here are 3 principles for writing better emails from this book and some other resources I’ve read.
1. Make the Subject Line Specific
Make the subject line descriptive so the person knows right away what the email is about. Don’t use a headline such as “Interesting,” “Good Article,” or even just “Proposal,” because they don’t provide anything specific about the content.
Instead, a good subject line would be something like: “Proposal for New Hires in 2009.”
2. State the Required Action, or Other Purpose, First
The very first thing should be a brief greeting, such as “Hi, Fred. Good job in the meeting today.”
But then move right to your point. State your point, as specifically as possible, in 1-3 sentences. If you have ideas that you want Fred to consider, for example, say that you have ideas for him to consider and state specifically (and briefly) what your main idea is.
Don’t just say “Fred, I have some ideas for you to consider,” and then spend 3 paragraphs getting to your main idea. Instead, state specifically what your idea is. For example, say: “I think we should consider hiring an additional widget manager next year because of the planned 23% increase in production. I am wondering what your thoughts are.”
3. Give the Background Second
After you’ve stated your main point, then provide the details.
This is key, so I’ll say it again: Give your main point, and then provide the background.
This is different from a detective story, or a novel, or any other type of writing where the discovery is part of the fun. With email, there isn’t time for this. And especially when doing work email, there is a business purpose to your email. You need to save the other person’s time by telling them your point right away, and then only after that providing the details in the event that they need to see things fleshed out more.
4. Keep Your Paragraphs Short
When providing the background, keep your paragraphs short. Wall of words are hard to read. Be short and to the point. And keep it relevant. Use bullet points when possible.
4. Close by Clarifying the Next Steps
If the background section gets longer than a few paragraphs, it is a good idea to close by summarizing the action step(s) again.
5. Don’t Forward Emails Without Summarizing the Point at the Top
Last of all, a word on forwarding: If you need someone’s opinion on something, don’t simply forward them a long email thread and say “what do you think?” Instead, summarize the main action you need from them right at the top, and then summarize the main point of the email thread.
Try to make it so that all the thread is needed for is to provide the details, if the reader feels that they are necessary.
How I’m Processing the Questions on Email for Next Week
In my post yesterday on how to get your email inbox to zero, I encouraged readers to email me their questions on email and effective practices that they use. I’ll then do some posts next week answering the best questions and highlighting some of the best ideas from people.
A helpful way to illustrate my system might be to summarize how I use it to handle these email questions I receive so that I have access to them next week when I write the posts, but still have them in an organized spot in the meantime.
Here’s principle number one for me in this: I’m not keeping those emails in my inbox.
Those who read the post yesterday could probably finish this post today for me. What I did is create a new folder in with the “working folders” that I encourage people to have. The constant folders in there are “answer,” “hold,” and “read.” But you can also create temporary folders in there for support material that you need to keep on hand for a bit, or which you need to collect for a task in the coming days.
So I created a folder called “WBN Questions” in in with my other working folders. Whenever I get a question, I send a quick thanks to the person and then move the email into that folder. Next week when I write the post, I’ll go into that folder, review the questions again, pick the best ones, and write my post.
When I’m all done, I’ll delete the emails (though I never permanently empty my deleted bin, so I’ll still have them on file), and then delete this temporary support folder.
How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day
It is possible to get your email in-box to zero every day, even if you get 100 emails a day.
And it’s not super complicated — though it does take effort and some discipline. But I don’t think that lack of effort has been the main problem. I think the main problem has been not knowing how to manage email effectively.
A lot of people have simply never been taught some of the basic best practices for keeping email under control. For example, most of us fall into the trap of using our email in-box as a small to-do list from time to time (really bad), and sometimes we even end up using our in-box as a holding tank for major project items (far worse).
The result is that we go through the day with the sense of having a thousand “open loops” continually before us.
The goal of this article is to outline some very simple practices that will enable you to manage your email in a way that is effective, simple, and maintains a sense of relaxed control. You should be able to take this article and use it to get your in box from whatever point it is — even if it’s at 15,000 emails — and get it down to zero.
And it shouldn’t take too long (although if you have 15,000 emails, maybe you should just delete everything more than three weeks old and start over!).
And you’ll be able to keep it there. Or, at least, if you don’t keep it there, it won’t be because you don’t know how.
Overview
In this article, we are going to cover five areas. By going through these five things, we will go through a process that will enable you to get your email inbox to zero and keep it there. The five areas we will cover are:
- Setting up your email workspace
- The rules of processing
- How to handle the four different types of emails
- Email filing (don’t do it)
- Staying at zero all day long: how often should you check email?
(I have also made a pdf of this article available for those who would prefer it in that format.)
Send Me Your Questions on Email
I just posted above a detailed article I’ve written on how to get your email inbox to zero every day. The process works really well. I find it entirely doable to get my inbox to zero at least once a day, with the exception of days when I’m away from my computer or when I shut email down to focus on large projects, and in spite of receiving some pretty complicated emails.
(Although this doesn’t mean that there are never any days, or weeks even, when you need to let things go completely haywire, or just say “enough!,” which I think is just fine from time to time — more on that in future posts.)
Now, the article certainly doesn’t answer all questions that can arise. In addition, I’m really interested in hearing what approaches you have found effective in dealing with email.
So here’s what I think will be most interesting of all:
- Send me (or put in the comments) your questions on email. Send the toughest ones you can think of, especially anything that has been a consistent snag to you, or any unanswered questions from the article. I’ll then do a post next week giving my answers to the most puzzling and most helpful questions and we can also discuss them further in the comments if desired.
- Send me (or put in the comments) some of the email strategies and tactics that you’ve found most effective, and I’ll feature the most interesting or useful ones in some posts.
About Matt Perman
Follower of Christ. Husband of one, father of three. Director of strategy at Desiring God. This blog exists to help equip Christians in good works, because that's what productivity is really about.
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