Web Overload Solutions
A few ideas from The Harvard Review to help reduce infoglut.
As a Recipient
Turn off automatic notifications of incoming e-mail. Check and take action on messages at specific times.
If you won’t be able to respond to an e-mail for several days, acknowledge receipt and tell the sender when you’re likely to get to it.
As a Sender
Make messages easy to digest by writing a clear subject line and starting the body with the key point. Use boldface headings, bullet points, or numbering to highlight action items – and to note who’s responsible for each one.
For very short messages, put the entire contents in the subject line, followed by “eom” (end of message).
Whenever possible, paste the contents of an attachment into the body of the message.
Minimize e-mail back and forth by making suggestions (“Should we meet at 10?”) rather than asking open-ended questions (“When should we meet?”).
Before you choose “reply to all,” consider the time burden your choice places on each recipient and if you can’t justify it, remove the recipient from the send list.
For your own sake, send less e-mail: An outgoing message generates, on average, roughly two responses.
- Posted on November 04, 2009 in web |
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