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Overcoming Email Overload

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From Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge
October 25, 2004

Being at or near the the top of your organization, everyone wants a piece of you. So they send you e-mail. It makes you feel important. Don’t you love it? Really? Then, please take some of mine! Over 100 real e-mails come in each day. At three minutes apiece, it will take five hours just to read and respond. Let’s not even think about the messages that take six minutes of work to deal with. Shudder. I’m buried in e-mail and chances are, you’re not far behind. For whatever reason, everyone feels compelled to keep you "in the loop."

Fortunately, being buried alive under electronic missives forced me to develop coping strategies. Let me share some of the nonobvious ones with you. Together, maybe we can start a revolution.

The problem is that readers now bear the burden
Before e-mail, senders shouldered the burden of mail. Writing, stamping, and mailing a letter was a lot of work. Plus, each new addressee meant more postage, so we thought hard about whom to send things to. (Is it worth spending thirty-two cents for Loren to read this letter? Nah….)

E-mail bludgeoned that system in no time. With free sending to an infinite number of people now a reality, every little thought and impulse becomes instant communication. Our most pathetic meanderings become deep thoughts that we happily blast to six dozen colleagues who surely can’t wait. On the receiving end, we collect these gems of wisdom from the dozens around us. The result: Inbox overload.

("But my incoming e-mail is important," you cry. Don’t fool yourself. Time how long you spend at your inbox. Multiply by your per-minute wage(*) to find out just how much money you spend on e-mail. If you can justify that expense, far out—you’re one of the lucky ones. But for many, incoming e-mail is a money suck. Bonus challenge: do this calculation companywide.)

(*) Divide your yearly salary by 120,000 to get your per-minute wage.

Taming e-mail means training the senders to put the burden of quality back on themselves.

How you can send better e-mail
What’s the best way to train everyone around you to better e-mail habits? You guessed it: You go first. First, you say, "In order for me to make you more productive, I’m going to adopt this new policy to lighten your load…" Demonstrate a policy for a month, and if people like it, ask them to start doing it too.

  • Use a subject line to summarize, not describe.

People scan their inbox by subject. Make your subject rich enough that your readers can decide whether it’s relevant. The best way to do this is to summarize your message in your subject.

BAD SUBJECT:

GOOD SUBJECT:

Subject: Deadline discussion

Subject: Recommend we ship product April 25th
  • Give your reader full context at the start of your message.

Too many messages forwarded to you start with an answer—"Yes! I agree. Apples are definitely the answer"—without offering context. We must read seven included messages, notice that we were copied, and try to figure out what apples are the answer to. Even worse, we don’t really know if we should care. Oops! We just noticed there are ten messages about apples. One of the others says "Apples are definitely not the answer." And another says, "Didn’t you get my message about apples?" But which message was sent first? And which was in response to which? ARGH!

It’s very, very difficult to get to the core of the issue.

You’re probably sending e-mail because you’re deep in thought about something. Your reader is too, only they’re deep in thought about something else. Even worse, in a multi-person conversation, messages and replies may arrive out of order. And no, it doesn’t help to include the entire past conversation when you reply; it’s rude to force someone else to wade through ten screens of messages because you’re too lazy to give them context. So, start off your messages with enough context to orient your reader.

BAD E-MAIL:

GOOD E-MAIL:
To: Billy Franklin
From: Robert Payne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Please bring contributions to the charity drive

Yes, apples are definitely the answer.

 To: Billy Franklin
From: Robert Payne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Please bring contributions to the charity drive.

You asked if we want apple pie. Yes, apples are definitely the answer.

  • When you copy lots of people (a heinous practice that should be used sparingly), mark out why each person should care.

Just because you send a message to six poor coworkers doesn’t mean all six know what to do when they get it. Ask yourself why you’re sending to each recipient, and let them know at the start of the message what they should do with it. Big surprise, this also forces you to consider why you’re including each person.

BAD CC:

GOOD CC:
To: Abby Gail, Bill Fold, Cindy Rella
Subject: Web site design draft is done

The Web site draft is done. Check it out in the attached file. The design firm will need our responses by the end of the week.

 To: Abby Gail, Bill Fold, Cindy Rella
Subject: Web site design draft is done

AG: DECISION NEEDED. Get marketing to approve the draft

BF: PLEASE VERIFY. Does the slogan capture our branding?

CR: FYI, if we need a redesign, your project will slip.

The Web site draft is done. Check it out in the attached file. The design firm will need our responses by the end of the week.

  • Use separate messages rather than bcc (blind carbon copy).

If you bcc someone "just to be safe," think again. Ask yourself what you want the "copied" person to know, and send a separate message if needed.Yes, it’s more work for you, but if we all do it, it’s less overload.

BAD BCC:

GOOD BCC:
To: Fred
Bcc: Chris

Please attend the conference today at 2:00 p.m.

To: Fred

Please attend the conference today at 2:00 p.m.

To: Chris

Please reserve the conference room for me and Fred today at 2:00 p.m.

  • Make action requests clear.

If you want things to get done, say so. Clearly. There’s nothing more frustrating as a reader than getting copied on an e-mail and finding out three weeks later that someone expected you to pick up the project and run with it. Summarize action items at the end of a message so everyone can read them at one glance.

  • Separate topics into separate e-mails … up to a point.

If someone sends a message addressing a dozen topics, some of which you can respond to now and some of which you can’t, send a dozen responses—one for each topic. That way, each thread can proceed unencumbered by the others.

Do this when mixing controversy with mundania. That way, the mundane topics can be taken care of quietly, while the flame wars can happen separately.

BAD MIXING OF ITEMS:

GOOD MIXING OF ITEMS:

We need to gather all the articles by February 1st.

Speaking of which, I was thinking … do you think we should fire Sandy?

Message #1: We need to gather all the articles by February 1st.

Message #2: Sandy’s missed a lot of deadlines recently. Do you think termination is in order?

  • Combine separate points into one message.

Sometimes the problem is the opposite—sending 500 tiny messages a day will overload someone, even if the intent is to reduce this by creating separate threads. If you are holding a dozen open conversations with one person, the slowness of typing is probably substantial overhead. Jot down all your main points on a piece of (gasp) paper, pick up the phone, and call the person to discuss those points. I guarantee you’ll save a ton of time.

  • Edit forwarded messages.

For goodness sake, if someone sends you a message, don’t forward it along without editing it. Make it appropriate for the ultimate recipient and make sure it doesn’t get the original sender in trouble.

BAD FORWARDING:

GOOD FORWARDING:
To: Bill

Sue’s idea, described below, is great.

—

From: Sue

Hey, Abner:

Let’s take the new design and add sparkles around the border. Bill probably won’t mind; his design sense is so garish he’ll approve anything.

To: Bill

Sue’s idea, described below, is great.

—

From: Sue

Hey, Abner:

Let’s take the new design and add sparkles around the border…

  • When scheduling a call or conference, include the topic in the invitation. It helps people prioritize and manage their calendar more effectively.

BAD E-MAIL:

GOOD E-MAIL:
Subject: Conference call Wednesday at 3:00 p.m.

 Subject: Conference call Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. to review demo presentation.
  • Make your e-mail one page or less.

Make sure the meat of your e-mail is visible in the preview pane of your recipient’s mailer. That means the first two paragraphs should have the meat. Many people never read past the first screen, and very few read past the third.

  • Understand how people prefer to be reached, and how quickly they respond.

Some people are so buried under e-mail that they can’t reply quickly. If something is important, use the phone or make a follow-up phone call. Do it politely; a delay may not be personal. It might be that someone’s overloaded. If you have time-sensitive information, don’t assume people have read the e-mail you sent three hours ago rescheduling the meeting that takes place in five minutes. Pick up the phone and call.

How to read and receive e-mail
Setting a good example only goes so far. You also have to train others explicitly. Explain to them that you’re putting some systems in place to help you manage your e-mail overload. Ask for their help, and know that they’re secretly envying your strength of character.

  • Check e-mail at defined times each day.

We hate telemarketers during dinner, so why do we tolerate e-mail when we’re trying to get something useful done? Turn off your e-mail "autocheck" and only check e-mail two or three times a day, by hand. Let people know that if they need to reach you instantly, e-mail isn’t the way. When it’s e-mail processing time, however, shut the office door, turn off the phone, and blast through the messages.

  • Use a paper "response list" to triage messages before you do any follow-up.

The solution to e-mail overload is pencil and paper? Who knew? Grab a legal pad and label it "Response list." Run through your incoming e-mails. For each, note on the paper what you have to do or whom you have to call. Resist the temptation to respond immediately. If there’s important reference information in the e-mail, drag it to your Reference folder. Otherwise, delete it. Zip down your entire list of e-mails to generate your response list. Then, zip down your response list and actually do the follow-up.

  • Charge people for sending you messages.

One CEO I’ve worked with charges staff members five dollars from their budget for each e-mail she receives. Amazingly, her overload has gone down, the relevance of e-mails has gone up, and the senders are happy, too, because the added thought often results in them solving more problems on their own.

  • Train people to be relevant.

If you are constantly copied on things, begin replying to e-mails that aren’t relevant with the single word: "Relevant?" Of course, you explain that this is a favor to them. Now, they can learn what is and isn’t relevant to you. Beforehand, tell them the goal is to calibrate relevance, not to criticize or put them down and encourage them to send you relevancy challenges as well. Pretty soon, you’ll be so well trained you’ll be positively productive!

  • Answer briefly.

When someone sends you a ten page missive, reply with three words. "Yup, great idea." You’ll quickly train people not to expect huge answers from you, and you can then proceed to answer at your leisure in whatever format works best for you. If your e-mail volume starts getting very high, you’ll have no choice.

  • Send out delayed responses.

Type your response directly, but schedule it to be sent out in a few days. This works great for conversations that are nice but not terribly urgent. By inserting a delay in each go-around, you both get to breathe easier.

(In Outlook, choose Options when composing a message and select Do not deliver before. In Eudora, hold down the Shift key as you click Send.)

  • Ignore it.

Yes, ignore e-mail. If something’s important, you’ll hear about it again. Trust me. And people will gradually be trained to pick up the phone or drop by if they have something to say. After all, if it’s not important enough for them to tear their gaze away from the hypnotic world of Microsoft Windows, it’s certainly not important enough for you to take the time to read.

Your only solution is to take action
Yeah, yeah, you have a million reasons why these ideas can never work in your workplace. Hogwash. I use every one of them and can bring at least a semblance of order to my inbox. So choose a technique and start applying it. While you practice, I’ll be on vacation, accumulating a 2,000 message backlog for when I get home. If you want to know how well I cope, just send along an e-mail and ask….

Targeted Ads are the Worst of all Possible Worlds

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The justification used for the incredible invasions of privacy on the part of the internet marketers of the world is that they want to serve us “targeted” ads. Targeted ads are ads that relate to what we’re doing at the moment. Theoretically, if I’m having a discussion about how my child is dying from kidney failure, that’s exactly the moment when I’ll feet eternally grateful to be shown an ad for how to overcome that embarrassing middle aged male incontinence issue.

All joking aside, targeted ads seem worse to me than random ads, even aside from the privacy violations. I am online to get things done (sometimes work things, sometimes social). I am rarely online to buy things, and when I am, I know it.

A “targeted” ad has a much higher probability of successfully distracting me into a purchase experience and completely derailing what I’m trying to do. An untargeted ad, though distracting, is much easier to ignore and far less of a drain on my productivity.

Perhaps if I intrinsically valued purchasing things, I’d welcome targeted ads. But I don’t intrinsically value buying things.

So on the very rare occasions I’m in buying mode, targeted ads are a good thing. But in the rest of my life, which is 99% of the time, targeted ads are downright destructive.

Don’t accidentally say f**k you to your customers!

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T-mobile is using the tune of the song F**k You by Cee Lo Green in their latest radio ads. They apparently missed the part of psychology where people recall the words to songs. They sing about how you should switch to T-mobile, which doesn’t require a contract.

Their intent is for you to break up with your current carrier. But communication doesn’t work that way. When we communicate, our audience hears … whatever our audience hears. Anyone who’s ever said to their shmoopie, “would you please pick up your socks?” knows that an innocent question can be heard as an attack on someone’s entire identity1.

Here’s how communication really works: I get my audience to think “f**k you” by listening to a song whose tune makes those lyrics come to mind. Then the lyrics say “T-Mobile” over and over. When my audience hears is “f**k you, T-Mobile.” Over and over. I seriously doubt that was their intent.

When you’re designing ads, public speeches, or even just carrying on a conversation, pay attention to the words you use. Choose words carefully, so they have the greatest chance of unambiguously conveying just the message you want to come across. And if you’re talking to your shmoopie, the only safe words are “yes, dear.” Use them often.

  1. For those of you not yet in relationships, the question “would you please pick up your socks?” is heard as “You are an ignorant slob who doesn’t deserve to live.” A much better way to say the same thing is to say, “Shmoopie? I’m cleaning the apartment. Where would you like me to put your socks?” ↩

Efficiency Might Be Bad

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I’m a huge fan of system dynamics and the understanding of complex systems that has come from the field that Jay Forrester invented.

This is a superb article by the late Donella Meadows about the leverage points in complex systems, in ascending order of effectiveness.

Alas, most of the things we do to try to change our social and economic systems use only the least effective levers.

Tonight I’m especially struck by #9, delays in systems. Delays of information and material movement can throw a system into or out of sync in ways that utterly change the system’s characteristics.

For many years, we’ve been operating as a society under the implicit assumption that speed = efficiency. The faster things are, the fewer delays, the better off we are.

But this isn’t necessarily true. Increasing the efficiency of communication decreases the time between communication we have to understand and respond. We end up in reactive mode, rather than thoughtful mode. That’s one of the pernicious effects of email. Many people take action on email as it comes in, rather than taking action only on what’s important. That can make the difference between overload and achievement.

Removing communication delays also seems to reduce our tendency to prepare. When you can make changes to your presentation all the way until the night before it’s due, then you will. In prior years, when you had no choice but to finish early enough to send your slides to be duplicated, you actually had time you could then use to rehearse and concentrate on delivery, rather than on making last-minute changes.

Read the article. Let me know your thoughts, if you still have enough attention span to make it through, after all the years we’ve spent training ourselves to operate in a purely reactive—but oh, so efficient–mode.

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/419

Is texting in meetings rude?

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Do you think it’s rude to text/email during a meeting?

Some say it’s multitasking. An article I read celebrated “the skill of following along in person while simultaneously [doing other stuff]” Alas, that skill simply doesn’t exist. Our brains are not wired to multitask, and splitting attention vastly decreases the quality of thought we bring to the individual activities.

Furthermore, even though you may not consider it rude, it can have very real negative effects for you. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely discusses this in his book The Upside of Irrationality. When someone took a quick cell phone call in the midst of an interaction, the person they were interacting with was quick to retaliate by not returning a cash overpayment. (He then showed that an explicit apology offset that effect. So perhaps texting then apologizing is fine behavior.)

If the text or email is relevant to the task at hand, perhaps we can adopt the same policy we did in elementary school: let the team leader see the notes being passed back and forth. Next time someone texts in a meeting, they have to show everyone the text sent and the response. Then the group can decide whether it’s worthwhile

Sources:

Internet: mass manipulation tool?

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I’m downloading Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday, about media manipulation on the internet, at the recommendation of a professional journalist friend.

As I read a few of Ryan’s blog articles and PR interviews from the book, I’m struck by how much his experience matches mine. Though I’ve not tried the kind of conscious manipulation he describes, I’ve seen it all over the place and noticed the same lack of basic fact checking in various stories I’ve been involved in.

My most striking example of this was several years ago when a Fortune 500 company revealed to me how easy it is for them to engage in mass manipulation now that the blogosphere lets them leak stories from different sources and have it all build to appear to be a preponderance of independent evidence.

Another Ryan, the amazing and awesome Ryan Allis (founder of iContact, uber-optimist, and serial entrepreneur) and I spoke about this over dinner a few weeks ago. His view is that the internet has evolved to the point where the truth will come out, despite attempts at manipulation. Especially with the rise of social media, manipulation doesn’t stand a chance because the truth will get out via informal networks.

What do you think?

In Business and Life, Understand *Their* Needs

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I ordered a book from Amazon, gift wrapped for a friend’s birthday. It arrived complete with the little card that had my special message in it. And … Amazon’s logo on the outside. Really? Amazon feels the need to piggyback their branding on my gift? If they offer the service of gift-wrapping, that’s great. That’s wonderful. I even paid $4 for that! But if they want me to provide them with free advertising, piggy-backing on the emotional warmth of my relationship with my friend, they should be paying me. A lot. Because there are some things in life that just aren’t meant to be a business opportunity.

What Amazon is missing here is understanding my needs. I want to create a special, two-way emotional connection between me and a friend. They help by providing the book I’m buying, and wrapping it beautifully. And that’s where their involvement should end. Then when I think of Amazon, I think of them as facilitating what’s really important to me—that connection.

Consider Their Needs, not Yours

When you’re doing something nice for someone, be it providing a solution to a customer, a favor to a friend, or a surprise to a loved one, take a few moments to consider their needs. What do they want in the moment? If your goal is to strengthen your relationship with them, put their needs first. If you’re going to surprise your partner for Valentine’s Day, ask what they would consider romantic. Not what you consider romantic. My idea of romantic music is Blink-182. But if the person I’m romancing prefers a Wagnerian opera, that’s what will be romantic.

Just as considering their needs will create the tighter relationship, ignoring their needs can destroy it. A client wanted to acknowledge a summer intern for a job well done. The intern simply wanted to be in the team photo that was going out to clients at the end of the month. The boss thought an intern didn’t belong in a company photo, and instead gave a beautiful Thank You card. Unfortunately, to the intern, inclusion in the picture meant appreciation. Without that inclusion, the Thank You came across as an empty gesture. Rewarding someone means choosing a reward that they value.

Take a moment now to think about the important people in your work and life. What kind of relationship do you want with them? How do you want them to feel about you? What have you done to engender those feelings? Satisfy their needs and you’re on your way to a long, loyal relationship.

Use Emotion in Marketing? Only With Care.

Pretty much every class in marketing I’ve ever taken is all about how to trigger knee-jerk emotional responses in people so they act NOW to buy your product, even if it’s not right for them, or if there are better competitors on the market, or if they actually don’t need it, etc. But if you’re going to trigger emotion, at least learn how emotion works.

I just logged into Paypal, which gleefully proclaimed they’re the “most loved” way to send money. Loved? Really? Someone in their marketing department needs serious therapy. I don’t love Paypal. In fact, I find the interface ugly, and the workflow tedious. And did I mention annoying? I often want to pay a Paypal-only vendor from my credit card, to make bookkeeping easier. But they force me to pay from my Paypal balance if I have a positive balance. Love? Nowhere in the equation.

I’ll bet if you were asked to describe your feelings towards Paypal, “love” wouldn’t be what jumps to mind. And here’s the thing about emotions: the best way not to evoke an emotion is to name it. When you name an emotion, if you’re right, you establish rapport with your reader. But most of us have very different emotions about many things. When you name an emotion and it doesn’t match what your reader is feeling, you lose credibility, big-time.

If you want to be “the most loved” brand of anything, create experiences that evoke love, not experiences that talk about love. My bank, Eastern Bank, is constantly telling me how great its service is. Yet their online system won’t let me download copies of my recent (or non-recent) statements, and that’s virtually the only banking activity I find useful to do online. Rather than telling me the service is great, they should find out what service I want or need and provide that.

Intuit did that in the early days of Quicken. We followed people home, watched how they used the product, and created a product that was so easy to use and so much fun to use that customers did, indeed, love the product. We didn’t tell them how much they loved the product; we made the product so lovable that the customers did the rest.

Apple didn’t say, “Stever, you love your iPhone.” Apple made the experience of using the iPhone so pleasing (at least to me) that I can hardly put the darned thing down. I love the product because the product is lovable.

The lesson for you:
– If you want to be loved, be lovable.
– If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.
– If you want to be admired, be admirable.

Don’t tell us what you want us to feel, just give us the experience. And if you do it well, you’ll end up getting everything you want.

Why I Like Paper

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A reader wrote in:

I read your suggestion about the 3×5 pad and it sucks! That’s because I hate paper and pen note-taking. I want something that I can carry with me anywhere on my handheld and which will also prompt me, just like a personal assistant, not something which will load me with the extra work of transcribing to a master list! As if I am not burdened enough already! Look, I need something to help me gain lost time each day. Something to boost my productivity and tidily organise my intended activities in a manner that enables me to take action on them!

My reply:

The reason I like paper is that the transcribing *forces me* to confront whether or not a particular task is important enough to copy by hand. If it isn’t, that’s a sign that it probably isn’t important enough to keep on my list. The key to freeing up time, ultimately, is saying “No” to commitments and then vigorously protecting the time you’ve freed up.

If time is getting lost, you need to stop doing the things that you define as “losing” it. Smartphones are often big time losers. Yes, the phone is a fun toy, and yes it can do cool stuff, but measured *in terms of my getting my important work done* (as opposed to my unimportant, imagined work), it’s probably doesn’t make me that much more productive.

The problem is that it speeds up some things, but it slows down others. For example, I type about 1/3 the speed on my smartphone as I do on my desktop. I may find it convenient to respond to email on my smartphone, but it’s actually making me *less* productive. And even if I could answer email at the same rate, the moment I click on a link and spend 5 minutes web browsing or playing a game, any email productivity gains get lost as I waste time goofing off.

If you’re brave enough, try keeping a log for a couple of days. Note what you get done on your smartphone and what you get done at your desk, and how much time each takes. You may find your smartphone boosts your productivity. Or you may find it doesn’t. For looking up phone numbers and addresses, my smartphone is awesome. But does it really save time? I used to clip someone’s business card into my rolodex and I’d memorize it after 2-3 calls. Now I have to retype or scan-plus-double-check each card to get it into my address book (or pay someone to do it, which means earning the money to pay them). And then I *always* have to look them up, because I no longer memorize.

Assuming I make 5-6 calls a day, am I really more productive with an electronic address book when you take all that into account? I suspect yes, but I probably save a few minutes a month, *not* hours.

In short, I like paper because it forces me to think. I like technology because it’s fun and sometimes convenient. But I never assume that paper is automatically bad, nor do I assume technology is good. Like any tool, test it out and be careful that adopting a new, faster tool in one area doesn’t slow you down in another.

Use Social Media to Trumpet Your *Real* Awesomeness!

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“Thousands of people just like you are sharing, right now!” says a social media site. Then, I suppose, my sharing would be utterly redundant. And my following their streams would be an exercise in narcissistic boredom. Is this *really* the pinnacle of human technological achievement?

I share a lot on social media because it’s part of my job. I have a very popular podcast that offers what I hope is a unique perspective with content that ranges from heard-it-a-thousand-time-before to novel and new. I work very hard to provoke thought, either by refuting some conventional wisdom I believe is wrong, or by asking provocative questions that stimulate a conversation.

If “thousands of people just like [me] are sharing,” then my sharing adds nothing, so why bother? A far better message is, “go get off social media and do something fascinating, intriguing, exciting, and wild! Then come back and share when you have something unique to share.”

Let me pose a challenge: if you spend time on social media sharing the book you’re reading, or which ice cream parlor you’ve stopped at for a cone, stop it. Use that same time to daydream a challenge to undertake, a mystery to solve, or an adventure to create. Then go do it. And then share that on social media. Not only will you attract a larger audience, but you’ll have a life worth broadcasting as a role model.