Oh, don’t get me started on animated gifs…

Tolerable for personal emails but NOT for work!

2. Inconsistent email systems. Outlook is the worst offender but there is no standard – or none adhered to – for doing things. One example is Gmail used to let you send email as if it came from a different, verified, email address of yours. This was great for small businesses and people wearing multiple hats. Outlook would get it and say From XXX on behalf of YYY, thus exposing your root email address that the smart person keeps closely guarded to avoid/manage spam.

2. In terms of social emails, the annoying thing is that emails are like letters, but because they’re so easy to do, most people just write quick little bits instead of well-thought out letters. Hence, instead of having a group of nicely written letters that I could file away in a cute little box, I have hundreds of memo-style messages that aren’t quite meaningful enough to store under my bed, but aren’t meaningless enough to delete. Arrgghh! I don’t like making decisions.

3. Important emails get mixed up with e-newsletters, and hence, I pay less attention when I get them. When you recieve letters however, you can clearly see which ones are from friends and which ones are from companies. Friends hand write, use real stamps instead of ‘postage paid’. Emails all look the same. Ooh, that’s a good point I made, if I may say so myself…

4. When you recieve an email at work, how soon should you respond? How do you know when the other person is going to respond? Most times I’d rather just pick up a phone and sort it out there and then. Instant gratification. Ahhh.

Also would be great if there was a system that was smart enough to organize my e-mail (by sender and subject perhaps?) as it comes in. That way, I’d have a general idea of what’s on my plate in each category before I even open them.

Every now and again I slip and fall (behind) but never for very long.

For me, the greatest challenge with e-mail is, even though I am caught up, the masses still abuse e-mail, and worse, many mis-interepret their job as “doing e-mail”.

E-mail is a communication tool, not a work force or project tool. Sure, we as managers are to blame for not helping our employees better understand that but one look at the tools (Outlook, mail.app, LotusNotes, etc.) and you see that there is no application that treats e-mail the way it should be although Gmail comes close.

At work they instigated a new system whereby any messages over 3 months old are automatically deleted. At first it caused great angst but then I realized that I rarely went back that far to find something. If I do need to find something sent that long ago, it’s more effective to ask for an update, since there have likely been several changes/updates.

I’ve actually created different e-mail accounts for different purposes: work, family correspondence, non profit affiliations, friends, and one for all the newsletter/promotional info I sign up for. It helps to keep things segregated. Of course, it doesn’t stop my family or friends from sending messages to work but it does minimize the clutter.

My own personal ettiquette – if it’s important I always call the person I sent it to to alert them. I typically need to collect data/information from direct reports/colleagues. This way they know to look for my message and I can reinforce any deadlines. I also try to use other communications tools besides e-mail: phone calls, collaboration sites, IM, or just waking into someone’s office for a real conversation. If any communication vehicle if overused, it becomes ineffective.