Is Email the Enemy?
By Rhonda McNettI noticed an OpEd piece in the Sunday newspaper several weeks ago and it hit me right in the gut: "Enough already - stopping the email overload." (Skagit Valley Herald, 9/27/11; sourced from Chris Anderson for the Washington Post) I took this so to heart because of one of the "cuts" right at top of the article,
"...An email inbox has been described as a to-do list that anyone in the world can add to."
Bingo! That's it! No wonder I can't get anything done when everyone else has access to my personal to-do list! Add to this the spam, double-hits when something goes awry in cyber-space and emails we actually ask for and you can see that it's no wonder we are all tearing our hair out! One of the recommendations that organizers will make is that you DO NOT check your email first thing in the morning - your planned agenda and preset priorities will go right out the window if you do!
If you also have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. you're really going to be inundated. Oh, let's keep adding: Yelp updates, Google updates, Yahoo updates - the list is seemingly endless. Folks also seem to feel hugely affronted, too, if you don't reply instantly - "What do you mean, you have a Life?!" (or maybe a job you are trying to do?!)
But wait- there's hope! You don't have to "...become a reactive robot responding to other people's requests, instead of a proactive agent addressing your own priorities..." After all, dealing with all this email IS keeping you busy, right? Productive? Efficient? Effective at the project you are trying to complete? Do you really think so? Deep down, I doubt it...I think it's probably called procrastination.
Enter the Email Charter, www.emailcharter.org. Ten simple thoughts that we can share with everyone we know to shorten the emails we send, or maybe find alternative methods to them - like picking up the telephone when more appropriate; walking across the office to confer with a colleague or next door to see the neighbor; doing some further research on our own to even negate the necessity of that email.
I'm sharing so that we can all try some of these methods to show respect for each other's time and inboxes. Please take a few minutes and peruse the charter site itself for further clarification, but in a nutshell here we go:
- Respect recipients' time.
- Short or slow is not rude.
- Celebrate clarity.
- Quash open-ended questions.
- Slash surplus cc's.
- Tighten the thread.
- Attack attachments.
- Give these gifts: EOM (End of Message, in the subject line) and NNTR (No Need To Respond, at the end of your email).
- Cut contentless responses (I need to learn that email is NOT a conversation!)
- Disconnect - stay "off-line" at some points in your day!
I hope this is of some interest or use to you and thanks for putting up with a bit of a rant this time around. I, for one, am going to remove my "Reply All" button from the tool bar - that will make it truly uncomfortable to add half the world to any future emails and make me cognizant of who really requires any of my future missives. Might seem odd to ask this, but...please email me with any thoughts you have on this (Really? Yes!) and...become signers of the Email Charter!
If clutter has taken over your life and you just can't get it together...If you have too much stuff in too small a space and can't decide what needs to go...If you're frustrated and stressed because you can't find your keys, your wallet, your checkbook...If you're inundated with paper and getting buried in piles of it...If you would like less confusion, stress and frustration and more peace, order and serenity in your life...You'll find relief at Sensible Organizing Strategies. Get free organizing tips and information from Rhonda McNett at http://www.sosbyrhonda.com/contact.html. Find the peace and harmony hiding in your home or office.
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