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Dealing with email

March 22nd, 2008 | by Jose Miguel Cansado |

No doubt email is an extremely useful tool for communication. It has replaced fax and snail mail in enterprises and it is widely used …and abused. Email has made organizations flatter. Any employee can reach anyone in the organization, including the top , with a simple email. Adding people to distribution lists is so “cheap” that long distribution lists become the norm. This is forcing managers to deal with hundreds of emails a day. So huge is the inbox overload, that many are questioning the effectiveness of email and some are even declaring email bankruptcy. 

Different techniques have emerged to deal with email, and RWW details some of them in Five Methodologies to Deal with Email Overload. The five techniques are:

- Getting Things Done (GTD). As you read each item, if it requires action: 1) Do it (if less than 2 minutes), 2) Delegate it, 3)Defer it.
- Tim Ferris’s method: check your email only twice per day: once at 12:00 noon and again at 4:00 pm. Never check email first thing in the morning.
- Keep email responses under 5 sentences long.
- Folders and Rules. Set automatic filters (MS Outlook) or labels (Gmail) to organize your email.
- Email Bankruptcy method. Give up email and let your colleagues know.

The five methods can be used concurrently. I use a GTD-like approach when reviewing email, but following Tim Ferris advice, I only check email during a few slots a day. I do not do the five sentences strictly speaking, but definitively avoid writing any long email. I use filters and labels mainly to deal with newsletters. I have not declared email bankruptcy, but I sometimes fake it, so that people do not expect from me an urgent response if they just send an email. If something is so urgent, it should deserve a call. 

Another email golden rule: “Agreements are written, disagreements spoken“. That is, never try to solve a disagreement by email. You will only get an annoying ping-pong email trail. Pick up the phone or organize a call, get the agreement and distribute by email.

And if we speak of tools to deal with email, Blackberry is the one. It helps do emails in any waiting situation (traffic jam, long lines, while in a taxi, or waiting for boarding…) Just beware it can create addiction..