Friday, February 21, 2014

The 10 Worst Email Habits


While you may claim to hate email, the truth is that you don’t hate email.
You are peeved by the people who send them.
We’re talking about those email senders who fire off messages that are inane, stupid, weird, incomprehensible, worthless, depressing and annoying.
So it’s time to do an email intervention. It’s time to save the email numbskulls who don’t seem to understand that their bad messages make us believe they are also inane, stupid, weird, incomprehensible, worthless, depressing and annoying.
We beg all bad email senders to stop:
  1. Making vague requests.  If you’re requesting a time to meet with someone, for example, don’t say you need to meet “by next week.” Provide your available times and dates, so that the person can respond without the back-and-forth emails trying to hammer out a time and place. If you need the person to provide specific documents of a certain length, say so.
  2. Letting threads run too long. There’s no reason to hit “reply” so many times the message thread is now as long as Shaquille O’Neal’s right arm.
  3. Being lazy. You don’t want to search through your own files, look on the Internet or make a phone call about an issue, so you send an email that sounds something like this: “Hey Jeff! I can’t remember when we signed that contract with XYZ. Do you remember? Also, do you happen to remember the contact’s name and email? Thanks! Daryl.”  Colleagues see right through this, and resent being asked to interrupt their own work to be your personal assistant.
  4. Using too many abbreviations. You use so many abbreviations and buzzwords that the person can’t tell if you’re asking a question or delivering (read more here)

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