You got mail!
A good idea gone amuck

Is there anyone in charge out there?

There must be a better way of managing our inboxes. The technology is wonderful. The benefits are innumerable. But, pardon us, we have some issues, here. Nobody told us part of the deal was a daily time commitment equal to that of another part-time job.

You've probably seen some of the awful statistics. Someone guesses it's costing companies $300 billion a year in lost productivity. The Wall Street Journal reported we spend 4 hours digging out of our pile of email each day. VeriSign and the International Data Corporation have been counting and took a stab with their total of 62 billion emails zooming through the digital ether, everyday. And, we figure most of you believe most of them are landing in your inbox.

For most companies guidelines on effectively using email don't exist. But, some are trying. Intel has created "The 10 Commandments of Email", as has Harvard Business School Publishing. The problem is no one that you know actually follows the rules.

Nonetheless, that doesn't keep us from trying. ITSolutions surveyed the plethora of best practices that various experts have assembled. Let us share the best of what we found:

Be ruthless - Scan headers, and delete everything you don't need to know or act upon materially. We know it's not easy.

Lose the attachments - It's wasted time struggling with incompatible formats, files that never arrived, and attachments that got garbled or stripped off the message. Instead, find a good spot on a company intranet for posting and downloading.

Take a pill - Don't send e-mail when you're tired or angry. It takes a lot of time to undo the damage. Treat e-mail like a phone call; wait for a calmer moment to respond.

Take a walk - Don't substitute e-mail for a necessary face-to-face meeting -- especially when it comes to reprimanding or rewarding

Don't be stupid - E-mail can be easily forwarded to the wrong person, or worse, to the subject of your non-affection. Not only does e-mail have an uncanny ability of being resurrected it can also be used against you in a court of law.

It ain't a novel - Keep messages brief and to the point. Nothing is more frustrating than wading through an e-mail message that is twice as long as necessary. Concentrate on one subject per message whenever possible.

What's it got to do with me? - Copy only people who are directly involved. Period.

Be sparing with group e-mail - Send group e-mail only when it's useful to every recipient. Use the "reply all" button only when compiling results requiring collective input and only if you have something to add.

Use the subject field for well. SUBJECTS! - Be specific Instead of writing "Meeting," How bout "Sales team meeting from April 3rd"

Don't use your inbox as a "catch all"- Move them to project-specific folders. Set up a "Five Weeks Folder" that deletes its content automatically after five weeks. Use it as a repository for messages you're unsure about, such as that email you want to delete, but you're not sure if the guy's going to call you tomorrow and ask about it.

The way to get fewer e-mails is to send fewer e-mails.

Reprinted with permission from DLP Technologies