People ask me all of the time how I am able to stay on top of the hundreds of e-mails a day, have empty in-box and still have time to come up with the occasional crazy game idea.
I follow the following rules that I developed over the years. They are pretty obvious things, but are my mantra when it comes to e-mail.
Please add your thoughts and ideas, as I want other people to be more efficient so we can have more time to blog and help each other...
Here they are:
1) E-mail
should never replace face to face.
- This happens all of the time in
the office. People park their butt in their seat and never leave. Get up
out of your seat and walk over (side effect: exercise) and ask the
question, or answer the question in person. Not only is this more
personal, it kills a long chain of e-mails.
- If everyone did this, we
wouldn’t all be sitting at our desks all day being unproductive with
e-mail and keeping M&M in business.
2) E-mail
sorting is my friend
- Most of the time people waste
using is e-mail is reviewing and deleting spam or “mail list” items.
- A great example is I get tons
of e-mails everyday that say something like: “The support system is back
up and running, thanks for your patience, Jim”. I get these all day long.
Everyone gets these in the company over and over all day long.
- The difference is that I sort
them into a Thanks, Jim folder and only look at them when I need that
service.
- This can work for many
different things you identify that fall into this category
- Projects can be quickly
sorted and categorized by importance with a little work
- An example is that all
E-mail from my Boss or other executive to me has a special flag, so
that I respond immediately.
- Another example is if
certain people from my developer send e-mails, they get deposited into
a special folder that gets read immediately.
- In general all of the above
items has me focusing on the right things and this helps both me save
time, as well as my “customers” get answers quickly.
3) Keep an
empty mailbox (Yes, my e-mail in-box is empty as I type this)
- I know this is unimaginable to
most people, but when you have an empty in-box everyday, then you don’t
worry about what you missed and you likely got back to who you needed that
day. (I have already handles over 200 e-mails and it is still early in the
day, but I have an empty in box)
- Most people have tons and tons
(I have seen 1000’s) of e-mails in their in-box. They should make folders
and start sorting.
- I usually reply to an e-mail and
as part of the process of writing you a response, I take your original e-mail
and file it into an appropriate folder in case I need it later.
- The worst case scenario is I have seen people forget if they replied or not and either spend tons of time searching to see if it was sent, or sending a duplicate e-mail. Both wasting valuable time.
4) Get off
of mass e-mail lists at the office if you don’t need to be on them
- Production folks are
micro-managers by nature and we feel that we can’t “live” if we don’t know
everything that is going on with our projects.
- With a little discipline and
restraint you can have your team include you when you are needed and you
don’t need to see every bit of information, as this is a huge time sync.
- If you don’t trust someone on
e-mail and that is why you are being “CC’d”, they should probably not be on
the original e-mail. Look for someone else on the team to handle that
item.
5) And last
but not least…..Drum roll please….
- Do not reply thanks, cool,
awesome, you da man, etc on any e-mail. In general people need to
understand that we appreciate their e-mail response to ours and not need
the thank you in reply.
- And even more
importantly….Don’t reply to the Thanks e-mail with the NP (no problem).
Really!
- And for all of those people that say that is “rude”. I say type in an extra sentence in your e-mail. “Thanks in advance”…
