So nothing is more annoying than people who thoughtlessly waste time and effort by composing their emails badly. Once a week perhaps, sometimes more, I find myself looking at an email with a death wish.

Scott Young has composed a list of seven bad email habits that make readers want to kill you.

He lists the obvious offenders — the hanging question, the buried request (with a fine example of how not to ask a question), and bulky paragraphs — as bad in snail mail as they are in email and which come from unthinking composition in any medium.

But then there are the email-specific sins. Think carefully enough about your email, he suggests, to work out if email is the right tool for the task:

E-mail works best for direct and non-time sensitive information. Conversations, discussions and anything that requires a heavy amount of back-and-forth should be done on the phone or in person. Trying to use e-mail to have these conversations can be slow, time-consuming and painful.

This extends to using email as emergency communication for urgent requests. If you need a response right away, the phone (or getting up and walking down the corridor) is the answer, not email. Don’t forget there are people who (unbelievably) only answer their emails once or twice a day.

And lastly he lists my most besetting sin, being an email smart arse:

Don’t try to be witty or sarcastic in an e-mail and pretend as if everything you say will be taken literally. Although a few metaphors can come across well in an e-mail, most don’t…. And don’t think using emoticons gives you the green-light to be clever and charming.

Sometimes, I find myself going so flat-chat to get to Inbox Zero that I dash stuff off without thinking, thus unwittingly making even more work for myself. It’s a kind of anti-productivity strategy.

There must be a better way. “Festina lente”, as Erasmus (Wikipedia ) might have said when opening his own inbox. email, not apple mail, not mail.app, communication, productivitySimilar Posts:

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It was sent out to all members of the Industry Canada network by Industry Canada’s “Messaging Support Specialist”:

Good morning everyone,
This message is directed to BlackBerry users who are unable to send messages from their BB devices.
Please answer “YES” if you are experiecing problems or “NO” if not.

There are at least two things wrong with this email.

One of them is more significant than the other, but both are clear demonstrations of an important principle: Think first. Email later.email, self-respect, industry canada, productivity, communicationSimilar Posts:

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Avoid other causes of communication breakdown:

• Guy Kawasaki’s 12 tips for better emailing
• How email fuels miscommunication
• Merlin Mann on working smarter and faster
• A brief guide to email style and manners
• The Ten Commandments of email according to Intel

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The survey of over 1,468 (53% male / 47% female) office workers contains few surprises, although it is interesting to compare the results with similar US studies on email use and gender and email productivity.

Email is the electronic medium of choice. The report found that “more people said they were addicted to email in the workplace than any other medium, with 78% of respondents claiming they couldn’t live without it.”

However, it seems email is not always being used for work-related purposes. UK offices are full of what the report describes as “bad behaviour”:

Professionals aren’t only using email to make corporate deals. 40% use the tool for gossip, 54% for socialising, and 60% for dealing with issues regarding their relationships with coworkers. Men are more likely than women to use email for socialising, whereas women are more likely to use it for gossiping.

The study asked respondents how long they needed to wait for a reply to an email before considering the recipient of the original email rude:

The survey also found that younger respondents were more adventurous in their communication channels than older ones, and males more than females.

In British offices, traditional communication methods remain important: “Leaving aside email for the moment, a high number of respondents rely more heavily on traditional methods of communications…. 29% use both fax and letter each day – although this figure rises the older the respondent.”

Finally the report identified three stereotypes in British workplaces. It’s always fun to think about which category your fellow workers fall in, so here they are:

The OAT (Old Age Technologist)
OATs are not necessarily old in age, but have more dated attitudes towards new communication technologies. OATs realise new technologies are becoming more prevalent in the workplace, but they’re dealing with this change by maintaining their tried and tested ways of communication. OATs are not sure how or why people have taken so readily to ‘new age’ communications tools.

The ESBO (Easily Sociable Behaviour Online)
Very comfortable when using modern communications, ESBOs are as happy text messaging their boss as IM’ing a client or taking part in a video conference. The ESBO zooms through the workday checking emails upwards of 300 times. Some ESBOs love the phone, some hate it, but the critical matter is that IM, text messaging and email have become more important than even their desks.

The StoIC (Slow to Implement Change)
The SToIC follows etiquette rules and doesn’t stray from accepted comfort zones. If there isn’t a generally accepted way of using a new technology the SToIC will avoid it altogether. The SToIC is still using the fax on a regular basis and would rarely consider writing a text message for work purposes.

If you are not sure which one you are, you can take an online survey to find out.

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Egotism and the inability to see things from another person’s point of view are the causes of increasing email-based miscommunication.

The study by two psychologists at the University of Chicago found that

people overestimate both their ability to convey their intended tone?¢‚Ǩ‚Äúbe it sarcastic, serious or funny?¢‚Ǩ‚Äúwhen they send an e-mail, as well as their ability to correctly interpret the tone of messages others send to them.

The solution, one of the researchers says, is to pick up the phone.

“E-mail is fine,” he suggests, “if you just want to communicate content but not any emotional material.”

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