Kelly Forrister from the David Allen Company shared the following 9 e-mail tips with me a few months back. I have incorporated a number of these tips into my daily e-mail routine. I'd highly recommend giving a few of these a try. I would also recommend sending all or a subset of these to your team members in an effort to align everyone on a set of simple, time-saving e-mail guidelines.
- If the subject of the email turns to a different matter than what was originally indicated in the Subject line, change the subject line to reflect the new topic. Be descriptive in your subject lines.
- In some cases, when responding, you can type your answer in the Subject line, thereby saving the recipient from having to open the email up. Example:
Subject: Hi Dave, give me a call when you have some time <EOM>
EOM or END = end of message (no need to open email) - Purpose of Cc and To
To: is for the name of main recipient(s). This is the person(s) expected to reply or take action. Others should simply be Cc:ed. Someone who is Cc:ed on an email is not expected to do anything unless specifically asked to in the email, more often the email is simply an fyi for them. - Request action clearly up front with a clear statement at the beginning of the email stating the required next action.
- Process and respond to external emails within 24 hours. This doesn't mean you have to have carried out any action but it lets the sender know you're on it. This is not expected of you when you are on vacation or taking time off.
- While we all like to thank others for their efforts and actions, if that is the only reason you're sending an email to a fellow staff member, you can save your colleague time by putting your thanks in the subject line. For folks with several hundred emails to process each day, this will be much appreciated. Additionally, consider "thanks" and "got it" emails don't always need to be sent.
- Resist the urge to "Reply to All" if not everyone on the original email needs to see your reply.
- If the email could take the recipient less than two minutes to reply (in your best estimate), include the keyword "2 min" in the subject line to indicate that for them.
- If there are several recipients who have action within the body of the email, highlight their names throughout the body with a text change to flag them of those actions.
2 comments:
One problem I notice is that when someone send me an email and the subject line says merely, "thanks" I will say to myself, "thanks for what buddy?" then I have to open it only to find that it is a copy of the last email I sent to him and I only realize after that this is one of the people who read this GTD tip and now I've wasted 2 minutes that I could have used elsewhere.
This tip works for internal emails, maybe... if the other person is aware of this netiquette process. If they are not aware they will think you are an idiot who is too lazy to type beyond the subject line.
I actually had a girl in our company who did this and it pissed people off because of the default way that I.S. had set up our Outlook view. We would call this girl and say, "Hey, next time you send us an email, don't just type in the subject line, we need you to write it in the body of the message so we can see it."
No fault of yours, but I wanted to give you an alternate view. I've found that not everything in GTD is applicable "as is." Most of it needs personal adjustment based on the individual circumstances.
bigbry, great perspective. Thanks for the feedback. As you note, “not everything in GTD is applicable as-is”; you need to tweak things to work the way you work. Not the other way around.
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