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Dear friends,
Hope this message finds you all thriving! There is a particular irony about my sharing my advice this month about email. Many of you know that I struggle to keep up with my email. I recently read the book Unsubscribe by Jocelyn Glei, and I learned some new email management strategies. You will have to tell me if you think they are helping!
First, let me share my basic email management. I’ve long since turned off pop-up notifications on my computer and silenced phone notifications for email. (Studies document that every time email distracts you, it takes precious time to regain focus.) I color-code email in my outlook inbox so that messages from certain people (like my staff and my mentees) appear in specific colors. Email that is only addressed to me is blue, so I can distinguish mass emails easily. This saves me time, and you can find detailed instructions on how to set this up here. I use the abbreviations EOM (end of message) and NNTR (no need to respond) in the subject line of emails as appropriate. I aim to be parsimonious about cc-ing people, and I try to move someone to bcc if I no longer need him/ her in the conversation. I designate an email as “spam” as much as possible.
Unsubscribe suggested email strategies that were new to me. Her method starts by asking several questions:
Does this email align with my work priorities?
Does this person matter to me or my work?
Is email the best medium for a response?
If all the answer to all these questions is yes, then you can triage your email. If it takes <2 minutes, answer right away. If someone else can answer it, then forward the message to the right person. If it takes longer and you don’t have time, calendar a time to address it.
Now write a great email! As with a newspaper article, put the most important information up front, especially if you have a request. Make your email as easy to read as possible, using bullets and bolded text in case your reader needs to skim. Imagine him/ her reading it on the phone while multi-tasking, and ask if it will be absorbed/ processed. One surprising finding from this book is that email tone comes across more negatively than you think. In one study, when people were asked to rate the tone of an email intended to be positive, they read it as neutral. An email intended as neutral came across as negative. This suggests that you should be overtly positive, expressing enthusiasm and gratitude when possible. Don’t be afraid of exclamation points! Finally, be explicit about when you need a response and what the response should be.
For example- instead of, “I saw this RFA- what do you think?” try “I would like to consider whether we could respond to this RFA. Can you please take a look and let me know by Friday, October 6th, if you would like to meet to discuss? Ideally we would meet the week of the 9th in order to have time to submit the LOI.”
Finally, let go of the idea of inbox zero. Inbox zero makes me happy but takes too long to achieve on a routine basis.
As always, thank you for reading! Let me know how these strategies work for you.
Warmly,
Urmimala