The past 20 years have seen a lot of change in the workplace in the way it communicates. The internet explosion has given everyone literally, fingertip access to more information than any generation before us. Can you just imagine companies nowadays without such technology?

The internet is also responsible for what has to be the most used tool for communication in the 21st Century workplace-email. In just two short decades email has gone from a socially interactive way [do you remember AOL???] of sending messages to each other to a modern communication tool that all modern corporations use as a necessity. Even though the internet is at our beck-and-call for instant access to volumes and volumes of information, email needs to be treated differently – or so I think.

Simply put, email is a way for anyone to transmit information directly to anyone else, whenever and from wherever they so choose. And once an email has been delivered, unlike its sender, it is very content to sit in our inbox, waiting patiently to be discovered. When we receive said email, we do what ever we want: trash it, save it, forward it, reply to it, print it up, or respond to it later.

Email has given us the ability to manage our communications in ways that were not possible before, but keep in mind that as the case with new technology we need to be careful that this new technology is not managing us.

Let’s face, we’re bombarded with email nowadays and don’t let me get on another soapbox about spam. I receive more email than I can reasonably process and our continually growing inboxes is a constant reminder of our information management ineptitude. Email overload is a very real problem in peoples’ lives nowadays especially in the office place.

There has been a lot of good discussions, magazine articles, blog articles, news reports, etc. about email productivity, so I thought that I would give you a short idiot’s guide to helping you with managing this problem.

1. Shut-off auto check or set it to a 20 or 30 minute interval. Everyone’s experience working at your computer and focusing on something important only to get a pop-up notification from your email application about an email from your boss asking you a question about your work or a client. Talk about a distraction. Or even worse, when inconsiderate people use the Reply to All button and hold a conversation about a thread. I’m sure if you work for the Hurricane Prevention Center you need real-time emails notifications, but if you don’t, then pace your email checks so you don’t get distracted.
2. Survival of the Quickest Response – if you can respond to an email with a 1-2 line response – a la 30 seconds – then do it immediately. This has nothing to do with filing or being organized. It’s about action and being productive. Get it out of your inbox before it gets on your To Do list. Conversely, avoid falling into a trap of composing a 60 minute email dissertation (read next point) with pictures, graphs and URL links.
3. KISS -Keep It Simple, Stupid – Don’t be so wordy. Your emails are not great works of literature. Keep it short and succinct. Move the email conversation forward by responding quickly with short but straightforward action points. Certainly ask for more information, if necessary, pose a question if it is warranted, or simply say, “Sorry, I don’t know.” Don’t think of emails as published works. This by no means that this is an excuse for bad grammar, slang, an over-abundance of acronyms, incorrect capitalization, or a lack of punctuation unless you really don’t care about how others perceive you.
4. Steal and Cheat – If you find yourself repeating a lot of your email replies use templates to help manage your answers to these frequent email requests. You can create boilerplate responses to these type of questions that you find yourself drafting over and over again.
5. Be true to thine self and don’t be a pack-rat with your emails. If you know, deep down in your heart that you’re never going to need a specific email message, either immediately archive it or just delete it. I remember with my previous employers, that they enacted a 200 mb limit rule on all email accounts. You would have thought that they had taken vacation days away from you. There was such an uproar as a result of people just saving emails in their accounts just because they didn’t want to delete or archive. Your email inbox will be much cleaner and leaner and you will finally be in control of the beast that is email…