Curious about Communication | Email Organization

Some people keep all emails in their inbox. 
This system involves:
•  some flagging
•  some deleting
•  little or no filing. 
•  using the search tool to find emails.

Some people move the emails into some kind of action folder.
This system involves:
•  writing the response email
•  filing
•  going through specific mailboxes to find emails

I’m a filing kind of person. 
As emails come in, they distract me (ding! ding!) if they pile up in a disorderly fashion.

I’ve found it easier for me to compartmentalize the emails in order to see what I have to do.
Just for you, I’ve made a screenshot of my email inbox and filing.
It’s a hybrid of some ideas in Getting Things Done.
I’m always honing it, but for now, it’s working.
Especially after all the great tips I picked up during my interviews about communication!

I hope this has been a helpful series. 
Enjoy the holiday photos in December and I’ll think of a new series to do for next year.
Cheers!
Suzi Q

Curious about Communication | Responding to Emails

How does your email organizational system help you remember to answer emails?
There seems to be two camps for taking action:  before responding to the email and after responding to the email.

Before responding to the email.

1) Leave the email in the inbox

Some people would read an email, then flag it or mark it as unread so they would know they still had to answer it.  This breaks the rule of “never touch something more than once”, but for many people, they needed time to think about their answer.  The flag or the unread mark helped them remember to answer the email.

2) Move emails somewhere else

a)  Some people move their emails into an action folder or an “in progress” mailbox.  The equivalent of a “to do” list.

b)  Some people set up filters in their email to automatically move emails into appropriate mailboxes.  Since the email is unread, the specific mailbox for the job or client will show that there is an unread email inside.  The person knows that they need to look inside that mailbox to respond.

After responding to an email:

1) Delete all emails:
One person deletes an email after he has responded.  He keeps no records.  Sometimes he would dig through his Gmail trash if he needed to find something.  This seems to work well for him.

2)  Delete some emails (for storage reduction and for clarity):
A few people would delete all the emails in a thread except for the very last message in the thread.
If the first message of the thread contained a document or image and they wanted to keep that email, they would flag it then file it in the appropriate mailbox within the email program, so that they wouldn’t delete it by accident.

3)  Move emails into appropriate job or client mailboxes

After responding to an email, people would know that it was complete by filing it into the corresponding mailbox for that job or client.

4)  Move emails into “waiting for answer” mailbox
After responding to an email, delete the email, then go to the “Sent” mailbox, grab what was written in response and put it in a “waiting for answer” mailbox. 
Then what’s in the inbox are only emails that still need to be answered. 
Periodically check the “Waiting” mailbox to see what communications are still on hold (and to wonder why it’s taking them so long to answer!)
File the email after a response has been received.

People had figured out different ways to keep their communication on track.
I’m sure there are more systems out there.
I’m curious to hear what else people have come up with….

Curious about Communication | Email Organization

It’s no accident that I’m a photographer.
I’m a visual person.
Being so strongly visual, I clear my inbox. 
When there are only a few emails in my inbox, I can see clearly what I have to do.

It’s been pretty eye-opening to see how others deal with the inbox.
My interview subjects are all successful at what they do, no matter what system they use for answering emails.
When I started doing my interviews, from my own bias I kept asking people how often they cleared their inboxes.
I just assumed that people DID clear their inbox.

Surprise to me!  I had evenly distributed responses for clearing the inbox:
•  every day  (a few people)
•  about once a month  (more people did this)
•  once every 6 months (again, more people did this)
•  once a year  (a few people)
•  never (a fair number of people)

I just couldn’t believe that people would keep so many emails in their inbox, but many did.
Or they waited as long as they felt necessary (a month or six months) before the inbox got too squirrely for them.
Or they just waited until the end of the year to archive the inbox.

I asked people to define how they clear their email inbox.  My respondants used these methods:
1) deleting emails
or
2)  archiving them in one big bunch (emails 2010, emails 2009, etc)
or
3)  moving emails into mailbox folders by client, job, person’s name, etc.

How does this all work in organizing your email?  More on that tomorrow!

Curious about Communication | Email Organization

On a whim last summer, I challenged myself to actually empty my email inbox.
It took me a few weeks.
It was pretty weird to see nothing in my inbox.  And pretty nifty too.
Then I tried to empty it every day.
Some days I can.
Most days, there’s still about 10-20 straggler emails.

From my interviews, the people who were able to empty their email inbox consistently had a few guidelines:
1)  short, concise emails
2)  delete or archive immediately after replying to the email
3)  reply immediately
4)  never touch anything more than once (from the Getting Things Done school of thought).

When you open the email, you decide to do one of the following:
a)  answer it
b)  delegate to someone else
c)  take action if need be
d)  file it away as reference
e)  delete it

I’ve been using a modified version of Getting Things Done.
It took some getting used to, but it’s been helpful in taming my email inbox.
It’s a good habit to form, like brushing your teeth every day.
Too bad there’s no email dentist to constantly remind you to clear the inbox every day.

Curious about Communication | Email Organization

Many of you have 20-50 emails to answer daily.
Then what?
Each day, that many more emails comes in and soon your inbox is overflowing.
How do you organize your inbox?
In my research and interviews, I encountered a few common methods for dealing with the email inbox.

1)  Keep all emails, answered and unanswered, in the inbox.

Result:  insanely huge amount of emails in inbox (see my November 1 blog post).
Pros:  use search tool to find emails when needed.
Cons:  sometimes can’t find the emails needed.  Curse the search tool.

2)  Answer as many emails as possible, with 30-90 hanging around in the inbox each day.

Result:  30-90 emails fits pretty well on your computer screen, all others are safely archived in mailbox folders
Pros:  manageable amount of emails to answer.
Cons:  daily grind of answering that many emails.  Will it never end?

3)  Answer all emails and remove them from inbox, except for a few floating reference or action emails.

Result:  at most 10 emails in inbox.
Pros:  it’s easy to see at a glance what needs to be done, just 10 reminders of what you need to do.
Cons:  need to dig through archives if something needs to be revisited.  Rue your overefficiency.

4)  Zero emails in inbox.  Answer and empty it every day.

Result:  feelings of exhilaration, minimalist aesthetic.
Pros:  Possible tendency to become workaholic or to feel smugly superior to others due to ability to completely clear inbox (even if it’s at 3am, meaning you have no life).
Cons:  need to maintain extensive mailbox folders; need to hunt through other mailboxes to answer the emails.

Since many people didn’t grow up with so much communication and didn’t receive any formal training in how to organize their email program, it is interesting to see the different approaches.

Which one is the best?

Each system seemed to work for that person.
I’ll go into more details tomorrow.

Curious about Communication | Email Trends

Many of you have taken this holiday as a day off.
What’s happening with your email today?
Have you resisted the urge to check it?

Why I ask (while I stuff myself with turkey confit) is that I know when I take a day off or when I travel, my email piles up.
I come back to what seems like billions upon billions of emails!  It can seem daunting.
It’s probably why everyone checks email all day long, just to keep the volume at a level that’s manageable.
Wondering if anyone else feels so slammed by the deluge, I asked people in my interviews how many emails they got each day.

Received:
100-300 emails per day

[Included the following items]
Spam
Newsletters
Product Announcements
Goofy Jokes from your mom
honest-to-goodness communications

Of those, how many really, truly needed a response:
20-30 emails per day
(with a few people having to answer 30-50 emails per day)

I know this can’t hold true for everyone, but it was consistent in my little survey.

20-30 emails…
Doesn’t seem like that many.
Can it truly be that difficult to answer those and do so in a timely fashion?

P.S.  Email Overachievers:
If you have over 100 emails to answer every day:
a)  I salute you
b)  share your tips for getting it done!

P.P.S.  Yesterday, the day before a major holiday in a recession during the shopping season totally hijacked my average results.   I received over 300 emails of newsletters, sales, and coupons.  My deleting finger is tired!

Curious about Communication | Email Best Practices

Business etiquette says that you should respond to an email in 48 hours.
If it requires immediate attention, bump that up to a 24 hour turnaround time.
Most people I interviewed had trained themselves to respond immediately.

Sometimes an email requires some thought or some research, making it hard to respond within 24 or 48 hours.
Don’t wait to respond though.
The other person might take your silence the wrong way.
Or they might wonder if you ever got the email.

A quick and good email practice is to send a temporary email.
I call it:

The Placeholder Email.

Or the Stopgap.  Or the Proxy.
Whatever you call it, it goes like this:

“Hi Mr. Smith,
Thanks for your email. 
Great to hear from you. 
I’ll need some time to think about your wedding proposal. 
I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

Whether it’s a marriage proposal or a simple business communication, don’t leave people in the dark.

Curious about Communication | Email Helpers

Mysterious Greta Garbo kept her life private.
While that’s intriguing, it’s really bad for email.
Email content needs to be obvious.

1)  Keep the thread visible.

Yes, it makes a short email seem longer.
But if the context of the email is removed, then your email recipient has to go back and open previous emails to know what was being said.
That extra bit of effort on their part will irk them and they might take longer to respond.

2) Change the name of the subject when an email morphs from one topic to another.

It takes a few moments.
It saves you time both now and later. 
You will know instantly, before even opening the email what topic is inside.
Later on, you’ll be able to find the archived email much easier.

Just don’t make your emails enigmatic.

Curious about Communication | Email Helpers

Another good way to improve your email communication:

Stay on target.

Keep your emails short and succinct.
If someone opens up an email from you and sees 4 longs paragraphs, they may not have the time to read it all. 
They may decide to not read it at all.

One of my interview subjects felt that if the email went on that long, then it should be a phone call.
The only exception being when the email contains a summary of a meeting or important decision.
Those emails are seen as reference material to be archived.
But for every day conversation, keep it short and to the point.

Curious about Communication | Email Helpers

Sometimes something as simple as a safety pin saves the day.
I’ve learned a new email technique that gets people to respond to me much quicker.

I include a deadline in my email.

I have moaned and groaned about people taking a long time to respond to my emails.
Now, I don’t make them guess.
I tell them when I need an answer.

It’s amazing how well it works.
People feel obligated to respond or at least to say “I don’t know yet.”
Which to me, is better than no answer at all.