Email Charter: We’re drowning in email

We’re drowning in email. And the many hours we spend on it are generating ever more work for our friends and colleagues. We can reverse this spiral only by mutual agreement.

From: http://blog.ted.com/the-email-charter-an-idea-worth-spreading/

1. Respect Recipients’ Time

   1. This is the fundamental rule. As the message sender, the onus is on YOU to minimize the time your email will take to process. Even if it means taking more time at your end before sending.

2. Short or Slow is not Rude

• 1. Let’s mutually agree to cut each other some slack. Given the email load we’re all facing, it’s OK if replies take a while coming and if they don’t give detailed responses to all your questions. No one wants to come over as brusque, so please don’t take it personally. We just want our lives back!

3. Celebrate Clarity

• 1. Start with a subject line that clearly labels the topic, and maybe includes a status category [Info], [Action], [Time Sens] [Low Priority]. Use crisp, muddle-free sentences. If the email has to be longer than five sentences, make sure the first provides the basic reason for writing. Avoid strange fonts and colors.

4. Quash Open-Ended Questions

• 1. It is asking a lot to send someone an email with four long paragraphs of turgid text followed by “Thoughts?”. Even well-intended-but-open questions like “How can I help?” may not be that helpful. Email generosity requires simplifying, easy-to-answer questions. “Can I help best by a) calling b) visiting or c) staying right out of it?!”

5. Slash Surplus cc’s

• 1. cc’s are like mating bunnies. For every recipient you add, you are dramatically multiplying total response time. Not to be done lightly! When there are multiple recipients, please don’t default to ‘Reply All’. Maybe you only need to cc a couple of people on the original thread. Or none.

6. Tighten the Thread

• 1. Some emails depend for their meaning on context. Which means it’s usually right to include the thread being responded to. But it’s rare that a thread should extend to more than 3 emails. Before sending, cut what’s not relevant. Or consider making a phone call instead.

7. Attack Attachments

• 1. Don’t use graphics files as logos or signatures that appear as attachments. Time is wasted trying to see if there’s something to open. Even worse is sending text as an attachment when it could have been included in the body of the email.

8. Give these Gifts: EOM NNTR

• 1. If your email message can be expressed in half a dozen words, just put it in the subject line, followed by EOM (= End of Message). This saves the recipient having to actually open the message. Ending a note with “No need to respond” or NNTR, is a wonderful act of generosity. Many acronyms confuse as much as help, but these two are golden and deserve wide adoption.

9. Cut Contentless Responses

• 1. You don’t need to reply to every email, especially not those that are themselves clear responses. An email saying “Thanks for your note. I’m in.” does not need you to reply “Great.” That just cost someone another 30 seconds.

10. Disconnect!

• 1. If we all agreed to spend less time doing email, we’d all get less email! Consider calendaring half-days at work where you can’t go online. Or a commitment to email-free weekends. Or an ‘auto-response’ that references this charter. And don’t forget to smell the roses.

Can anything be done to ease the stress of our ever-growing email in-boxes? TED’s Curator Chris Anderson has been thinking about the problem and today is launching an Email Charter to try to reverse the upward spiral.

The Charter has 10 rules that tackle the core reason behind email’s relentless growth — that email takes more time to process than to create. Email stress is clearly widespread. An earlier draft of the Charter attracted 50,000 views and hundreds of comments and tweets, which have helped shape the final version.

Chris sees the Charter as an idea worth spreading. “This is a problem that can’t be solved by individuals acting alone,” he said. “Email stress comes from all the unanswered emails in your inbox, and the fear that you may be causing offense or frustration to your friends and colleagues. If we can mutually agree some different ground rules, that stress can go away.”

The Charter calls on email senders to focus on respecting the time of their recipients and make emails as easy as possible to process. It also suggests we cut each other some slack, and just mutually agree it’s OK for responses to be ultra-short or delayed.

Further references: https://andrewnicol.net/email-charter/