Category Archive for: ‘Email’
Is email your work?
Very often we find that after a long day we haven’t made that much of a progress and all we can remember is email and the countless number of of the messages we’ve gone through.
On the other hand email provides us with instant gratification of completion. Simply take one message, respond to it and problem solved. If compared to few hours of continuous effort to close out a project not wonder email wins.
When someone takes a day to respond does this annoy you? We came to expect that since email provides instantaneous delivery people will behave in the same way. For many few hour response time is not acceptable. However we tend to forget that email is just one element of work. Unless you work in client service team and receiving requests via email you have plenty of other responsibilities. Managing email is only one of them.
What’s in your job spec?
Lets start at the beginning. When you look at your job description does it say deal with email? Most likely not.
For majority to of people the job spec includes things like reporting, writing, attending meetings and discussions, gathering information, routine tasks etc. Sure some of responsibilities will involve dealing with email but the connection is always indirect. Yet somehow we end up spending majority of our days dealing with email and complaining that we are not doing what we were supposed to to.
How much value?
When email came about initially it was this great tool for instant communication. When letters took days to deliver, email was this tool to deliver messages instantaneously.
Nowadays many people have this expectation that we should respond to email very quickly. Yet they forget about two things. Each of us receives plenty of mail, so when sender thinks he’s creating one to one connection for recipient it’s one of many connections to deal with.
Secondly we have limited number of hours at our disposal hence we need to make very smart choices and allocate time where we receive the most value in return.
Better choices
Since we can spend our working day on countless activities each similarly important we should consider following question: does responding to email is more important than working on a project Y or task Z? Unless you work in a call center and dealing with email and your primary responsibility it’s more than likely that you can wait few hours before responding.
Question
Before your start a new day and dive into unread messages consider what bring more value.
Can emails from yesterday evening wait until lunch time so that you can spend some time on this important project?
What’s the problem with email?
Many people seem to be struggling with email, drowning in constant stream of messages.The simplest answer to that question is volume. The amount of email received daily exceeds people’s capacity for processing and reacting to them.However I think this answer is simply scratching the surface. There are three basic elements that contribute to the problem with email.
Equality
Anyone can send you an email message all they need to know is you address. I can send an email to anyone in the world no matter who they are provided I know their email address. There are no barriers in terms of access, special costs, permissions. Think of spam or so called unsolicited email, the reason we receive so much of it is the fact that someone with computer can send email messages to everyone. Every email message is equal, when emails are passing through the wires each message looks the same no matter what’s the content. Sure there are filters to block things we don’t want but this does not stop it and spam still forms 90% of email traffic.
Simplicity
Email is one of the simplest communication channels we have available. Just type the email address, content of your message and hit send. You’re done. Your message will be received in seconds, minutes at most. Getting access to email is plain and simple too, all you have to do is access one of major portals in your country and go through sign up process. Usually it takes three steps because email providers want to make it easy. It’s equally simple to communicate on one to one basis as to email dozens or thousands of people. All you need is their addresses.
Ubiquity
Thanks to recent technology advancements and popularisation of internet connected devices we can receive, read and write email anywhere. Our smartphones and tables periodically check for new messages to grab and alert us with a loud ping. Email knows no delivery hours, unlike standard post email can reach you at 1p.m. or 1a.m. regardless what you do or where you are. Email does not know any boundaries a message from Africa will be delivered to Europe in the same way as a message from South America to Australia. Email is not bound by platform restrictions and difference that’s why you can receive emails from a colleague that uses Linux, a family member using a Mac and you can respond to them using your Blackberry smartphone. All platforms can read and understand the which makes it truly system agnostic tool.
Circling back to the original question, the three elements above on the face of it the seem to be main offenders. One could think it should be possible to make it more difficult to send email or we should ban use of devices in some places. Unfortunately these three features of email make up exactly what it is now. A highly effective tool, available to millions that is easy to use and that be be accessed from any where.
Back to the Question
So where is the actual problem? I think it’s our behavior. Email is just a tool, a very useful one, if you consider all the benefits that it brings.There are many people preaching email bankruptcy or that we need new tools because email is broken. The problem comes from the fact the people abuse email, make it more difficult for and others to read and respond email. Put various expectation on it with out consideration for how other people function.
Try to think how you use email and how you can improve on it so it’s easier others. As much we can complain about email and how others misuse it, the power to change is in your hands. Change your own behavior. Let others learn from you.
Remember one last, thing the more email you send the more you receive.
Why full inbox is bad for you?
Difficulty to prioritize
New stuff pushes the old off
Constant re-reading
It’s easy to loose them
Something is waiting to blow up
Email as an expectation
Let me start be explaining what’s is email on the basic level. As a primary it’s a communication tool to convey some sort of message. It might be a hello note from a friend, a bunch of photos form holidays, a business proposal, company announcement etc. Email serves this purpose great. It’s ubiquitous, simple to handle and unrestricted.
Second layer of email is to create expectation that the message will cause a reaction of the recipient. This reaction can take various form from a simple delete action to an actual response back to sender.
The unfortunate fact is that email can only pass a very limited non-verbal communication. You can’t see what the sender is feeling when he writes the message you can’t see his eyes, face, body posture etc. Emails have tone and energy but only for the one who type it, the recipient has only words in front and very few cues how to read it. That’s why same text can be read in different ways. This leads to great many misunderstandings, confusions and conflicts.
The problem lies in the fact that senders rarely communicate what is their expectation and what they want from the recipient. This is one of primary reasons we see emails with dozens of people included in cc: field. Unless it’s clearly stated that the message is for information only it mean that the sender is not sure what they do and hope that someone will react and do something.
This approach is not sustainable and not practical for few reasons.
- when receiving a lot messages a day it makes very difficult to look at every single one and decide what’s needed with out clearly stated point.
- for sender email is one to one relationship, I’ve sent you an email and I expect response. However repecipent has many such relationships and therefore it’s one against many.
- Clear expectation gives better chance for desired response. If people know what they are required to do, they are more likely to do it rather than put it for later.
Since you can’t change change other people’s behavior and how they use email but you can change your own. To put it simply lead by example.
Start of by clearly expressing what you want. Use clear and short sentences, avoid long winded explanations. Even complex problems could be explained in a simple way.
You will save other people’s time and energy. You will save yourself hassle and stressing over stuff.