The question I often ask clients is, are they busy doing other people's work from their mobile emails?
Looking at the types of emails we send/recieve, a trend seems to emerge, some people ask a lot more question using email, and some emails require us to do a lot more answering.
Today's email habits are still rooted in the blackberry culture that created it - there was no structure and framework around email use.
I still believe mobile emails are more beneficial for the people asking the questions, and not so good for people who have to answer answering the questions, often on their own time to keep up.
How does poor planning on someone else's part require you to reply instantly, or within the same business day? Very little should be that critical if the organization is truly-proactive.
Processing several hundred emails a day used to be a norm on a few recent projects. A few trends emerged to manage sanity:
- Poor emailing habits exist. Triaging is incredibly important, on top of GTD. Those 2 minute email replies can really add up, scheduling replies is important.
- The more we try to get ahead and email in our off time, the more replies we recieve in a vicious cycle. The more we send emails. Our time will never scale to meet the available time of all the people we simultaneously communicate with.
- I try to use mobile email only to read emails and to write as little as possible.
- Where I do have to write mobile emails, especially after hours, I consider if I want to be at the top of the person's inbox or not, and that's probably best achieved by scheduling an email to go out at 7 or 8 AM instead of the night before.
- The email scheduling feature in Aquamail is invaluable. I wouldn't be able to switch back to iOS without a comparable email client. Boomerang is handy too for automatic follow ups that can be scheduled at the time of sending.
- Try to centralize communication as much as possible and check email 1-3 times a day. Email can be followed up on, it isn't always the case with Slack. Slack/Chats are extremely valuable for realtime input.
I'd love to hear any other tips or strategies folks are using to manage their email flow.
Looking at the types of emails we send/recieve, a trend seems to emerge, some people ask a lot more question using email, and some emails require us to do a lot more answering.
Today's email habits are still rooted in the blackberry culture that created it - there was no structure and framework around email use.
I still believe mobile emails are more beneficial for the people asking the questions, and not so good for people who have to answer answering the questions, often on their own time to keep up.
How does poor planning on someone else's part require you to reply instantly, or within the same business day? Very little should be that critical if the organization is truly-proactive.
Processing several hundred emails a day used to be a norm on a few recent projects. A few trends emerged to manage sanity:
- Poor emailing habits exist. Triaging is incredibly important, on top of GTD. Those 2 minute email replies can really add up, scheduling replies is important.
- The more we try to get ahead and email in our off time, the more replies we recieve in a vicious cycle. The more we send emails. Our time will never scale to meet the available time of all the people we simultaneously communicate with.
- I try to use mobile email only to read emails and to write as little as possible.
- Where I do have to write mobile emails, especially after hours, I consider if I want to be at the top of the person's inbox or not, and that's probably best achieved by scheduling an email to go out at 7 or 8 AM instead of the night before.
- The email scheduling feature in Aquamail is invaluable. I wouldn't be able to switch back to iOS without a comparable email client. Boomerang is handy too for automatic follow ups that can be scheduled at the time of sending.
- Try to centralize communication as much as possible and check email 1-3 times a day. Email can be followed up on, it isn't always the case with Slack. Slack/Chats are extremely valuable for realtime input.
I'd love to hear any other tips or strategies folks are using to manage their email flow.