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Open Thread: The value and quality of email at work

40% of office workers spend 0.5-3 hours reading poorly written e-mail | IT Facts | ZDNet.com

More with the email research results:

Information Mapping claims that 80% of those surveyed deem email writing skills are extremely or very important to the effectiveness of doing their jobs. 65% of the respondents spend from 1-3 hours per day reading and writing emails, with 40% "wasting" 30 minutes to 3 hours reading "ineffectively" written emails.

Things is, I keep encountering people who get 100, 200, 300, or more actionable emails each day; not cron notifications, bug list CCs, or lunch at Chili's for Suzie from AR's birthday--I'm talking about real emails that require more than a one-line response or represent some kind of non-email work.

What amazes me is how much of people's email seems to be internal to their company, business unit, or direct team. If I ran a company and learned that most of my employees were spending that much time touching internal email, I'd ask my managers: "For how many and which employees is six hours of email each day adding value to the company?" Maybe that's just me.

Understand: I get that email is the way teams communicate on important stuff, but at a certain point, we're back to the guy from Metropolis, aren't we? I realize my view on this stuff is extreme -- I'm a hobo and I work at home -- but you tell me:

  • How efficient is your team and your company at using email?
  • How much of your day is spent dealing with email that does Good Things for your job or helps increase the value of that for which you're paid?
  • How much is spent just sorting, shuffling, and mining?
  • What one change in your team's email culture would most improve the way you work together?

Feel free to elaborate. And feel free to say you love getting all that email. I'd enjoy hearing a range of views on this.

Also: Non-scientific email poll

How many actionable emails do you get each day? That's email that requires more than a one-line response or requests non-email work.

Josh Hinds's picture

What a question. In terms...

What a question. In terms of daily email, mine can reach well in to the hundreds. I have had it pass the 1,000 point mark (rarely, but it has happened). Actionable emails can top 100+ a day pretty regularly.

What I find helpful in managing my email "best" is to include at the beginning of the email a note like: Thanks for your note. To help my reply flow more easily, I'll answer your message in the context of your questions below....

Then under each part of an email that needs a response where I am replying back I would start with my name like such...

Josh: yada, yada, yad, this is my reply (whatever I put here would just be my answer).

I'd repeat the idea above no matter how many different things I need to address in the particular email. I think it makes things flow a lot easier then simply replying to an entire email at the top.

Finally, I will simply delete (strip out) parts of the email that I don't need to address. I find doing that helps a lot to keep emails from getting extra long. Anyway, hopefully this is helpful... Josh :-)

 
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