If re-tweets are an indication of popularity then the email charter concept launched recently by TEDchris is very popular indeed. Today we take the time to look at this charter and its "10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral".
Given that this charter was developed in an environment where:
- the typical corporate user sends and receives 110 messages daily.
- almost one in five emails was copied unnecessarily to staff members other than the main recipient.
- 41.4% of respondents miss important news because of overload.
- 46.9% of respondents are unable to answer all email.
- it takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30 second interruption.
- reading and processing just 100 emails per day can occupy half a workers day.
- information overload cost US economy $900 billion per year in lower productivity and throttled innovation.
(you can receive these statistics as we update them on our Twitter feed).
then you can see the need to create some mutually agreed upon guidelines for how we use the communication tools available to us!
The charter suggests 10 ways in which we can individually affect the volume of email and the impact it has on our intended recipient.
- Respect Recipients' Time
- Short or Slow is not Rude
- Celebrate Clarity
- Quash Open-Ended Questions
- Slash Surplus cc's
- Tighten the Thread
- Attack Attachments
- Give these Gifts: EOM (end of message) and NNTR (no need to respond)
- Cut Contentless Responses
- Disconnect!
Our suggestion - pick one of these items today and practice it in each email you send out this week. Pick another one next week and continue on this way to doing your part in keeping information overload at bay for yourself and the people you work with.
While doing this you may create a short signature line that lets your recipients know what you're doing and link to the charter. Let us know which of these points you found had the biggest impact on your workday.
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