E-mailing – not blogging

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14 responses to “E-mailing – not blogging”

1. 

   August 14, 2007

   Jonas Cronfeld

   You can refuse to answer e-mails from boring and angry people ;)
2. 

   August 14, 2007

   Paul

   Random replies. Like “thank you for coming in to get your hair cut today, I hope you enjoy the new you,” and “give my best to Alice”
3. 

   August 14, 2007

   Michiel Trimpe

   Being an eternal optimizer and having worked full-time answering support emails for a while I would say the most enjoyable way is to collect template snippets and make answering emails with these snippets a sport.

   Find an email-program (I like The Bat!) that allows you to add these snippets with keyboard shortcuts. Then start with snippets like

   Alt-H: Hello %NAME,
   Shft-Alt-H: Hi %NAME,
   Ctrl-Alt-H: Dear Mr./Mrs. %LAST_NAME,
   Alt-A: I apologize for taking so long answering your email.
   Ctrl-Alt-A: I am really sorry for taking so incredibly long answering your email. I promise I won’t do it again!
   Alt-S: Kind Regards, My Name
   Shift-Alt-S: Greetz, yours truly!

   And keep on going. Don’t forget to also include the longer explanations you find yourself giving repeatedly. I used to enjoy writing many little articles answering questions people hadn’t even thought of asking as well.

   I eventually got to the point where I could answer virtually all emails in 30 seconds or so. To keep it fun I recommend editing them to include some personal touches or jokes though.
4. 

   August 15, 2007

   Michael Langford

   See 43folders.com

   They are to email-fu what you are to happy-fu.
5. 

   August 15, 2007

   Scott McArthur

   The best cure for this disease is the phone! I have tried everything – I’ve banned emails, allowing only those with attachements everything! But the cure is to talk to them – use the fone – go to their office and say hi. Be bold suggest that they come see you next time as you never really get a chance to read your emails.
6. 

   August 15, 2007

   MappyB

   Every time you answer an email, put some change in a jar on your desk. Even if it’s just a penny or a quarter. When you start running out, scavenge through drawers, if you’re home, the couch, random cubbie holes, etc. Then, when you’re finished, count whatever you came up with and go buy yourself a present!
7. 

   August 15, 2007

   Kristin Swanson

   Set a start and end time for this activity so that you are working fast. Turn on your favorite music and race to get through them:

   – Sort by from/sender first
   – Read your most important contact’s emails. If there are multiple under one subject, sort by subject – read the latest one and delete the rest. Go back to reading through by sender.
   – Delete as many as you can based on the subject line, considering the “sender” of course (this is the fun part – deleting!). If it is really important and you don’t reply, people will contact you.
   – Create a folder called “to read” and file as many as you can in there, read when you have more time (only high interest reading)
   – For ones that require you to do something – act on them as you read so they don’t sit in your inbox. If you can’t act immediately, file or delete now – create a folder called “action” and file it there. Put time on your calendar to work through the “action” folder.
   Reward yourself when you are done!
8. 

   August 15, 2007

   George

   Before you try Kristin’s good advice above… You can declare “email bankruptcy” -send out an email to everyone in your inbox informing them you had a computer crash and lost all your messages and if there was anything important they should resend it. Devious, but this surprisingly cuts my inbox in half as a lot of email sent to me is not that important.
9. 

   August 15, 2007

   Alexander

   Thanks for all the great tips people. I’ll be trying some of them out and report back here how it goes!!
10. 

    August 15, 2007

    Rowan Manahan

    Further to Michael’s suggestion, there’s a great video by Merlin on 43 Folders which brings it down to the real basics. Best hour I spent in quite a while.

    http://www.43folders.com/2007/07/25/merlins-inbox-zero-talk/

    Rowan
11. 

    August 15, 2007

    Sol

    Dharmaboost have adopted a cool email policy that limits the number of sentences any response or fresh email should contain.

    They say “Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it
12. 

    August 16, 2007

    Howie

    I agree with scott’s suggestion about the phone. At least in using the phone, we can’t get too busy with several calls coming in altogether. Instead, phone calls wait until we are free to receive them.
13. August 16, 2007

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