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Most people I know who have jobs in technology or management receive tons of emails.  A lot of those emails are pretty bad and result in them wasting a large chunk of their day.  In an effort to reduce the impact of bad emails on those around me, I try to follow a simple set of guidelines.  I have summarized them in these 21 tips.

Yes, 21 seems like a large number of items to remember, but I expect that you are already following a number of these… so you should only have to add one or two to your process. Plus, you are good at counting cards…. so 21 should be a perfect number for you.

1. If you ask for something, ask in a bulleted or numbered lists.  Sticking multiple action items into a paragraph guarantees that they will not get done.
2. Indicate when something is actionable or just for people’s information.
3. If you ask a question in an email, make sure to call out who it is to. E.g. Instead of “where is the IBA project estimate” use “Brett:  Can you send me the IBA project estimate”
4. Use priority flags correctly in your emails.  22 of the 37 emails I received from someone last month were marked “High Importance”,  only about three were actually High Importance… boy who cried wolf syndrome.  I stopped reading his emails.
5. Do not email everyone and their dad.  Feel free to limit your responses to specific people who care about and can do something about your questions/issues. Note: be sure to email your dad for Fathers Day.
6. If you really need something done, email a single recipient and follow up verbally (face to face, or on the phone).
7. Use spell checker if you are on your computer.
8. Review your email aloud before you send it out.  If you vocalize your email, you will likely pick up a lot of problems and typos.
9. Ask yourself what can be removed from your email when you review it. Remove fluff.
10. If you send an email to multiple people asking for action, don’t followup to all of them with one email,  touch base with or email them each individually.
11. Don’t over use abbreviations,  asap, imho, wrt…. if you type 40-70 words per minute you don’t need to pretend you are text messaging or paying per character.
12. Think about the tone of the email your are sending… Will everyone read it the same way in which you wrote it.  General  items that I know create bad tone include: Profanity,  directly pointing out incompetence (facts should speak for themselves), and bad mouthing someone.  Assume your email will be forwarded to A) your mom and B) Anyone you have discussed in the email.
13. If you are going to include an attachment, ask yourself if you can cut a certain part of the attachment out and put it directly in your email.  (E,g, an excel table or paragraph of text from a word doc ).  A lot of your readers will be consuming your email on a mobile device and attachments are still annoying on iPhones, blackberries, and Androids.
14. Don’t write a 5 page diatribe,  if it takes you 2 hours to write it and it take people an hour to read it, you may be better picking up the phone to call people.
15. If is a long email chain, cut a paste the parts that are important to the person you are sending it to.  Do not force people to scroll down to see your edits.
16. Get rid of that stupid 600 word legal disclaimer.  If what you are sending could get you in legal trouble, I recommend you don’t send it via email.  As a matter of fact, here is a better tip:  “Try and avoid things that could get you in legal trouble”
17. Include your contact information footer only when necessary (signature),  you should only need to include contact footer in origin emails.
18. Avoid Flame wars,  if you have a problem with what someone says, talk with the over the phone or face to face.  Using email to get in a pissing match is childish…. we are not in middle school.
19. Avoid Read receipts…. seriously…. Who uses read receipts??
20. Use simple words,  showing off your vocabulary is not cool.  Complex language is especially counterproductive when you are working with offshore teams.
21. Avoid using background images…. ugh.    True mark of non-professionalism.

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Example 1:

“How about instead of coming to work, I stay at home and watch cartoons all day.  You can call me if its an emergency, but I will only call you back during commercials, so you only have about 90 seconds. “

Example 2:

Admin guy (over the phone): “I can’t come in today and work on those server configurations”

Manager guy: “Are you sick? did something happen?”

Admin guy: “Well I was up all night working on those critical system backups”

Manager guy: “Those took all night?”

Admin guy: “Actually they took 11 hours”

Manager guy: “You spent 11 hours on them, what did you have to do”

Admin guy: “Well, I kicked off the backup script and checked it every 3-4 hours to see if it was still running.”

Manager: “So you didn’t actually work for 11 hours, you just worked for a few minutes.”

Admin guy: “I mean… if something had gone wrong i would have been there to work on it and fix it.”

Manager guy: “So, why didn’t you work on the server configurations last night?”

Admin guy: “Well, between checking the backups I was sleeping”

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