Stop Email from Killing Me Part 5

Here’s tips 7 - 9:

• I am trying to model good emailing behavior:
  • If I can reply in person, I do instead of emailing back; I schedule meetings to resolve larger matters or bulk process smaller ones.
  • I try to be brief myself, and follow five sentences (Five Sentences) when I can. I “get to the point” in the first sentence, or set off the start of “business” with “The point of my email is….”
  • I use bullet points.
  • I asked others how to decrease email. Faculty suggested a single, Weekly Department Email with all that week’s updates in one place instead of daily updates.
  • I asked my staff to not send useless emails. For example, apparently there were several women on the main campus who took off their earrings to use the fourth floor women’s restroom. The left them there, later realized it, returned, but found them gone. Staff at the main campus would send a School-wide email asking if anyone had seen these earrings. Like another 1000 or so people there, either I’m not on the main campus, or I don’t have pierced ears, or I’m male and haven’t been in the women’s restroom.
  • We sent out a SNAP! survey to our students to help us build a database of important information. It took about 60 seconds for them to complete, we got a 73% response rate, and we check this instead of asking folks to provide information we already have. I created “The List” of students who did not complete the survey despite three reminders, and they do not get help from me with questions, registration issues, etc… until they physically come in and complete the survey.
  • If there are several people I need to send an email to, I introduce the issue, then for each person bold their name and speak directly to what they need to be concerned with.
• I am using Xobni. This is really an amazing product that indexes your email, and shows a picture for each sender, their contact information, your discussions with them, and any attachments you’ve swapped… all in a sidebar in Outlook. (Supercharge Outlook with Xobni).
• I have considered templated answers. These aren’t as useful to me as I had hoped, but I have been using some Autohotkey (Automate Windows with AutoHotKey) snippets. These include:
  • various abbreviations for common terms (typing “dc” auto-replaces with “Department Chair”)
  • abbreviations for common email addresses (typing “bk@ bh@ cs@ ch@” auto-replaces with the email addresses of the other three Chairs and our Department Manager)
  • a standard explanation that we no longer have a copyediting course… I got tired of that question…
  • a standard explanation that my Department Manager schedules my appointments, and in fact can do it faster than I can since I may not be able to email back for one or two days