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My inbox is at 0 and other than gmail's auto-filtering tabs I don't have too much extra filtering going on (most of it is related to Google Alerts). For the la

by nickjj 8y ago

My inbox is at 0 and other than gmail's auto-filtering tabs I don't have too much extra filtering going on (most of it is related to Google Alerts). For the last 20 years my rule has been "If I check my email and inbox > 1 then deal with the email right now". I usually check my email every few hours. I'm not Mr. popular, but I'm also not anonymous. I do personal support for 30,000+ people who have taken one of my online courses so I get a fair amount of email and other things. I tend to write massive responses from scratch for a lot of them as well. The key is not to let it build up. Then you'll have 99 problems but email won't be one of them. Also I'm not sure if this is related but I'm one of those people who think it's unthinkably rude to ignore someone. I would never in a million years read an email and not respond to it (unless it clearly wasn't meant to be responded to). Likewise, if I see a > 1 inbox I feel compelled to handle it ASAP because I don't want to keep that person waiting. (Of course there's exceptions, like I'm not responding to pure spam, but I do get about 50 emails a week where people ask to post a guest post on my blog and I always manually respond nicely to them with a "no thanks but good luck" type of message along with some context around their niche).

glitchc 8y ago
This is a wonderful, but unfortunately very naive, approach to email. That you firmly believe this approach just means you haven't worked in a govt. dept. or any kind of position where your response represents the response of the organization (or a sub-set thereof). In such circumstances, emails that are open-ended (responses risk being misunderstood), ambiguously phrased (responses will be twisted to server the author's needs) or controversial (any response paints the organization in a negative light) are often best ignored. If your question is ambiguous, a busy boss or colleague does not owe you an answer or vice versa. Sometimes people respond out of anger or frustration. You could respond in kind, and escalate the battle, or simply wait and let the individual calm down. Not responding is a very useful technique when conflicts arise between team members or in the management chain. I would rather ignore an angry abusive email from an upset colleague who is having a rough time in life, than respond in kind and escalate it into an HR battle. Of course if the behaviour continues, there would be no choice, but most people are rather contrite and apologetic after a brief outburst and it's much better for everyone to just pretend that it never happened. People make mistakes after all.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  This is fantastic emotional intelligence email advice.
- everdev 8y ago
  Sweeping stuff under the rug helps in the short term but not the long term in my opinion. Compassionately responding to an abusive Email (even just saying, "I can understand why you were so angry...") might be the very response that person needs to dissipate their anger or re-evaluate how they communicate with people and that helps everyone they interact with after you. Sure, things can get messy too and some discussions are easier offline, but I think there's merit to completing conversations even if they're difficult.
  - adamsea 8y ago
    Sometimes yes and sometimes no.
- nickjj 8y ago
  > This is a wonderful, but unfortunately very naive, approach to email. I haven't worked in a govt. dept but I work in a situation where my response represents me being in business or not. I'm dealing with 30,000+ people who email me all sorts of questions, with varying degrees of niceness. Some people are cool, others are over the top passive aggressive. I get very open ended questions, tons of "it doesn't work" with no details, etc.. My job is to guide those emails into a resolution. If I treat anyone poorly (saying bad things or ignoring them) then I'll quickly be out of business because I don't have a monopoly. I take customer support very seriously. It's not even what I do full time either (although I'm always on call), it's just a side effect of running an online course business. You could say instead of having 1 colleague I have 30,000+ all of which who have their own personalities and struggles, none of which were filtered through HR. I once had someone get pretty rude for no reason and then after a few emails we fixed the problem. The next morning he wrote a ~1,000 word essay to apologize because his father died recently and he drank a 12 pack of beer when he initially contacted me. I always go down the kindness route and after answering over 5,000+ emails and questions I've honestly never had a negative experience where either party left the conversation upset.
bo1024 8y ago
I can't really relate to this -- my relationship with email is pretty different. Lots of my emails represent an ongoing todo item that requires some hours of work, or just some time to reflect, so I can't deal with it immediately. I could turn each one into a TODO item tracked somewhere else and archive the email, then later search for the email and reply or take action. But it makes more sense to me to categorize the emails and use an organized inbox itself as my todo list.
- wyclif 8y ago
  This is the system I use. I've tried lots of different methods but this is what works for me. The best thing about it is that it's not based on heavy process (Note: YMMV because this was written before the recent Gmail redesign). https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html
  - bo1024 8y ago
    I like the ideas behind the post. My approach is similar except I do triage into a few different tags. A nice effect is that filters on incoming mail can do a lot of this for you, like almost all automated emails can be tagged as such and checked over as convenient. (I'm not using gmail for this but I think you can do all this in gmail.)

by nickjj 8y ago

glitchc 8y ago

This is a wonderful, but unfortunately very naive, approach to email. That you firmly believe this approach just means you haven't worked in a govt. dept. or any kind of position where your response represents the response of the organization (or a sub-set thereof). In such circumstances, emails that are open-ended (responses risk being misunderstood), ambiguously phrased (responses will be twisted to server the author's needs) or controversial (any response paints the organization in a negative light) are often best ignored. If your question is ambiguous, a busy boss or colleague does not owe you an answer or vice versa. Sometimes people respond out of anger or frustration. You could respond in kind, and escalate the battle, or simply wait and let the individual calm down. Not responding is a very useful technique when conflicts arise between team members or in the management chain. I would rather ignore an angry abusive email from an upset colleague who is having a rough time in life, than respond in kind and escalate it into an HR battle. Of course if the behaviour continues, there would be no choice, but most people are rather contrite and apologetic after a brief outburst and it's much better for everyone to just pretend that it never happened. People make mistakes after all.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
This is fantastic emotional intelligence email advice.
everdev 8y ago
Sweeping stuff under the rug helps in the short term but not the long term in my opinion. Compassionately responding to an abusive Email (even just saying, "I can understand why you were so angry...") might be the very response that person needs to dissipate their anger or re-evaluate how they communicate with people and that helps everyone they interact with after you. Sure, things can get messy too and some discussions are easier offline, but I think there's merit to completing conversations even if they're difficult.
- adamsea 8y ago
  Sometimes yes and sometimes no.
nickjj 8y ago
> This is a wonderful, but unfortunately very naive, approach to email. I haven't worked in a govt. dept but I work in a situation where my response represents me being in business or not. I'm dealing with 30,000+ people who email me all sorts of questions, with varying degrees of niceness. Some people are cool, others are over the top passive aggressive. I get very open ended questions, tons of "it doesn't work" with no details, etc.. My job is to guide those emails into a resolution. If I treat anyone poorly (saying bad things or ignoring them) then I'll quickly be out of business because I don't have a monopoly. I take customer support very seriously. It's not even what I do full time either (although I'm always on call), it's just a side effect of running an online course business. You could say instead of having 1 colleague I have 30,000+ all of which who have their own personalities and struggles, none of which were filtered through HR. I once had someone get pretty rude for no reason and then after a few emails we fixed the problem. The next morning he wrote a ~1,000 word essay to apologize because his father died recently and he drank a 12 pack of beer when he initially contacted me. I always go down the kindness route and after answering over 5,000+ emails and questions I've honestly never had a negative experience where either party left the conversation upset.

bo1024 8y ago

I can't really relate to this -- my relationship with email is pretty different. Lots of my emails represent an ongoing todo item that requires some hours of work, or just some time to reflect, so I can't deal with it immediately. I could turn each one into a TODO item tracked somewhere else and archive the email, then later search for the email and reply or take action. But it makes more sense to me to categorize the emails and use an organized inbox itself as my todo list.

wyclif 8y ago
This is the system I use. I've tried lots of different methods but this is what works for me. The best thing about it is that it's not based on heavy process (Note: YMMV because this was written before the recent Gmail redesign). https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html
- bo1024 8y ago
  I like the ideas behind the post. My approach is similar except I do triage into a few different tags. A nice effect is that filters on incoming mail can do a lot of this for you, like almost all automated emails can be tagged as such and checked over as convenient. (I'm not using gmail for this but I think you can do all this in gmail.)