Whatever it was, I have a hunch that it had either a distinctive or descriptive title…

(Catch 22 and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity are my last two and I would highly recommend both of them!)

In essence, every e-mail you send has a title too. it is called a subject line and should describe the contents of that e-mail as clearly and succinctly as possible. Yet often, subject lines end up being the most disregarded aspect of the communication. The Subject line is much like the spine of a book, describing the information it contains. I certainly would never pick up a book that had any of the following titles:

• Photos
• Couple of thoughts
• Hallway
• Chicken
• Stuff for project
• Team meeting

Unfortunately, The majority of the e-mails we all receive have just such Subjects. Subjects that might implicitly mean something to the sender, but usually mean nothing to the recipient. How can any professional, writing such an e-mail, expect it to be taken seriously and responded to. The fact is, they can’t. In addition, it creates problems when looking for old e-mails, creates misunderstandings of actions required, makes e-mail threads difficult (sometimes impossible) to follow, encourages e-mails to be deleted by SPAM software, promotes lax e-mailing habits, and discourages the recipient from reading your e-mail thoroughly and responding to it in a timely manner.

All this can be remedied, however, with the simple use of clear, informative subject lines to indicate what the e-mail contains.

• FOR YOUR RECORDS: Donor Plaque - Approved (Sep 7) Final Artwork
• REQUEST: Need PDF of Johnson Building Exterior Elevation
• MEETING: RESCHEDULED to Mon Oct 4 @ 3PM
• FOR APPROVAL: JPG Website sketches for Mon Nov 7 Meeting

All these subjects are detailed and communicate the contents of the email clearly. They are much less demanding of the person trying to evaluate what they should expect when (or if) they click on the link to open the e-mail. They either::

1. State the purpose - Why are you writing this e-mail?
2. Make clear the intended outcome - What do you want this e-mail to accomplish?

This not only reduces your recipients mental workload when opening your e-mail, but also ensures a quicker turn-around in their response. Faster turn-around means work gets done faster; work that’s done faster means greater staff morale and bigger profits; bigger profits mean more e-mails… You see where this is going? The need to have clear and descriptive subject lines takes on even more importance.

Most professionals have never been taught how to write professional e-mails. Understanding the difference between what is needed for a personal e-mail to your wife about the petunias, and a professional e-mail to a fabricator about a $100,000 installation, can make all the difference in the world.

If you are like most e-mail users, your e-mail program is set up to check for e-mails every 5-10 minutes. That’s a whopping 48-96 possible interruptions per day respectively! That’s like the mail person giving you letters every few minutes throughout the day. Oh! here’s another one.

This is a bad business and organizational practice.

1. It is a sure way to get distracted from your tasks at hand.
2. Answering e-mail throughout the day, instead of at a given time, can cause attention and focus deficits often resulting in poorly thought-out or rushed replies.
3. Answering e-mail throughout the day will often create a “now or never” reply strategy.
4. Constant interruptions can take their toll on your attitude and self-esteem.

After reading an article on e-mail productivity, I now check my e-mail approximately 5 times per day, which is about 5 possible interruptions per day (I say possible because I sometimes get no e-mail anymore now that I write more sensible e-mail messages).

h4. But what about those “Must respond” e-mails that need immediate attention?

Quite frankly, they don’t really exist. How many e-mails have you received that had to be answered immediately that couldn’t wait 2 hours?

• Subject: YOUR WIFE IS IN LABOR RIGHT NOW!!!! GO TO HOSPITAL!
• Subject: I need the Jenkins file for my meeting in exactly 2 minutes!
• Subject: The Building is ON FIRE you should think about leaving!

Do these e-mails look familiar? Probably not? It’s probably because e-mail is not used in this manner, because it doesn’t work effectively for these purposes.

If somebody needs something right now, or tell you something right now… they call or call and e-mail. Plain and simple.

Often we get so wrapped up in our now culture to even think that there is an alternative.

I urge you all, to try for one week, to check your e-mails at most once an hour and preferably manually. Or use the low tech version and quit out of your mail program between checkings. If you don’t notice a significant change in the way you feel about your e-mail productivity - you get your money back.

Happy correspondence-ing.