E-mail: Keep it simple, stupid!

The mere size of our e-mail boxes tend to overwhelm anyone who sees them. Recently, a friend of mine apologized for being a day behind on his introduction to an online group project, citing some 1600 e-mails in his inbox as the main reason. I can relate. My mailbox used to be this way, too.

But not anymore. I have implemented the principles of kiss, that is to Keep It Simple, Stupid. There are several ways of handling e-mail, going to extremes in all directions. The most extreme is Inbox Heaven, advocating an empty mailbox and semi-constant checking. There's also the consolidation of e-mail boxes and a question of how extreme this consolidation should be. I believe it is impossible to prescribe a set of accurate rules, as the environment and method used to achieve your best performance is very subjective.


E-mail is intrusive on your workflow

I have implemented what I consider the best of all practices that fits me. For my own policy, I have not only considered an efficient handling of e-mail, but I have also carefully considered my priorities and made sure that my inbox does not interfere with my work.

When I had a cubicle job, one of my pet peeves was managers who kept dropping by my cubicle, taking my attention away from my work. Having to adjust to the new subject at hand took time and energy, as did adjusting back to what I was doing in the first place. It's like driving down the highway at 90 mph and get a phone call that demands that you read some paper you have stored in your briefcase to comment on a different project. You pull over, grab your briefcase, read the document, comment on it, and then you have to wait for a chance to merge into the traffic again. Repeat every ten minutes and your main project, driving from A to B, suddenly takes a lot longer time, and you also find out that you're spending more time starting and stopping the car than actually driving or even commenting. And this is the reason why big bosses have secretaries who keep track of appointments.

The e-mail inbox and its constant reminders have the exact same effect on your attention as those unwanted interruptive visits in your office. While the IT administrator usually can only dream of having his/her own secretary to keep the visitors to appointed schedules, we can at least do something about the nearly constant stream of e-mails: Have an appointment scheduled for your e-mail.

Seriously! E-mail is a form of letter, not an "instant message". Sending an e-mail to someone is like putting a note in their paper inbox, except it is now electronic. You get to it when you get to it.

If you have a habit of answering e-mails immediately, you inadvertently create the expectation that you will respond to the sender's problem immediately, maintaining the intrusive practice on your attention.

I read my e-mail inbox only three times a day: At 8.45 after my morning administrative tasks, at 12:30 after lunch and at 15:45 before closing down the office for the day. I'm considering to reduce this to only the morning and lunch check. After all, reading about people's problems before leaving work will only keep my mind busy at night, when I'm supposed to give attention to my family. This is wasted energy, as the people with problems have taken the day off, too, and will not be reading your response until the next morning anyway.


Other employees will adapt

Realizing that e-mail is, indeed, slow delivery of messages, other employees will eventually adapt to your regime. Within a couple of weeks of implementing this, they will learn to differentiate between sending an e-mail for simple stuff where they do not require an immediate response, and calling your office when they need something urgently.

And even with the urgent stuff, they learn that you do not live in your inbox. And the reason you do not live in your inbox is that you have actual work to do. This, in turn, has the effect that they come knocking on your door only if they really have to.

When I first implemented my new e-mail regime, I thought there would be a very slow learning curve for the other employees. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they learned the new practice a lot faster than the half year I had expected. Only a week after I started to do this, I stopped receiving e-mails that needed urgent responses.

To my surprise, people learned to think more and ask less, reducing the number of phone calls about those pesky "grey boxes on the screen with text on it and I don't know what to do about it. Should I click yes or no?" "What does the text in the box read?" "It says: Are you sure you want this file?" "The computer is wondering if you want to delete the file." "Yes I do. So what do I answer?" "If you want to delete file, click yes. If want to keep the file, click no." "I want to delete it, do I click yes?" "Yes." "*click* Ah! The file was deleted! Thank you so much! What would I have done without you, man?" (This example is slightly exaggerated)


Your time is precious

One of the problems with technical support, is that you often end up doing another employees job because a) you actually know word processing, b) you type faster, and c) the employee is crammed for time and is too stressed about it to follow your attempt at teaching them.

However, your job is to adminster the IT resources. Doing other people's job means that the other employee gets some time off while you're reallocating your work time to be their substitute.

Consider this simple math: You get five calls every day because some employees have too little knowledge about the software they have to work with every day. Even though helping them only takes "five minutes," it usually takes at least ten anyway. In addition, you have to adjust your mind to their problem, so add another five minutes of adjusting your attention back and forth between your own work and their problem. That's fifteen minutes per call, or an hour fifteen minutes per day of lost productivity.

For your typical 7.5 hour work day (8 hours when you include lunch, but lunch is not included in effective work time), that's 16.67% of your time. So take 16.67% of your annual salary and multiply by 1.5 for administrative overhead surrounding your job, and you see the amount of money this actually costs your organization, and add another 25% for the employee trying to find out how to do their job before they called you. The number you end up with should be enough to convince your superiors to spend a little more effort on training employees.


Keep your answers short and simple

Keeping a clean inbox helps you focus on the important issues. Just like your todo-list, you need to finish off tasks, so that the list doesn't grow. And just like your todo-list, when you're done with something, you need to get it out of sight. Keeping only open issues in your inbox means that you spend less time searching for important e-mails regarding an open issue.

Hence, I subscribe to the policy that if anything takes less than two minutes to answer, I answer it immediately. With an already reduced inbox, there are not many e-mails that need this attention anyway.

E-mails that require a lengthy response I write down in my work schedule as an appointment. I consider these replies as "requiring a document to be written." Even if it is a support call that requires a lengthy response, writing it up as a work documents will save you time later, when others encounter the same problem. I respond to these e-mails with information about the appointment I have set up for their response. Actually sending the lengthy response is then also not really writing them an e-mail, but sending them documentation on the issue.

Items that require discussion should lead to discussion. Writing back and forth on an issue is unproductive. Unless you're on opposite sides of the planet, it is better to schedule an appointment for the discussion. The discussion may then very well end with written documentation on the decisions made and the reasoning behind them, but you have not spent days on end in your mailbox.

After this, the only thing left in my e-mail is advertising. Working in a public institution, there is spam, and there is advertising e-mail from people I actually have bought things from before. While spam is deleted, I browse the proper advertising to see if there is anything useful. This takes me about 10 seconds to determine. Afterwards, I move the advertisment to a special advertisment mailbox. When I actually need to buy something, I search this holding box for offers received the last year. This saves me time from calling around to find out where I can get it and how much it costs.


"Did you read my e-mail?"

Occationally, you will receive a phone call about that e-mail someone sent two minutes ago. To avoid this, set up a signature-file that explains your e-mail policy. It may very well be as simple as "I do not live in my inbox, as I have actual work to do. I check e-mail only twice a day: at 8.45 and 12:30. If your request is urgent, give me a call instead."

When I receive a call about that two minute old e-mail, the first thing I do is to tell them that I won't be reading that e-mail until 12:30 (or 8.45 the next morning). After all, why should I have read the e-mail when they ended up calling me because of its urgency anyway?


Summary

Your job is not to read and write e-mail all day. Turn off alerts and check your e-mail only 2-3 times per day and do this only when it does not interrupt your work in progress. Do not spend much time answering e-mails. Lengthy discussions should be done in proper discussion, not e-mail. Lengthy replies mean that you have to generate documentation.

Another employee's lack of required skills is the other employee's and the organization's problem and needs to be addressed. The proper response is for the employee to receive proper training at a scheduled hour when it does not interfere with other tasks.

Make sure people understand your e-mail policy and why you have it. They will adapt and you will get some actual work done.