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Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed. Peter Drucker
Clean Out Your Inbox Week 2019
Clean Out Your Inbox Inbox week 2019 is here. Why join in? Business email overload is still one executive’s main concerns according to recent surveys. They worry about cleaning out their inboxes and will stay up until 10.00pm clearing the backlog only to find their inbox full again in the morning. All this leads to increased stress and potential mental health problems. Sounds familiar? Join the club. This is why we have been running the International Clean Out Your Inbox Inbox week for over a decade to help you improve performance and creativity whilst reducing the stress and mental health issues arising from business email overload.
During Clean Out Your Inbox week we will share tips and hints on how to clean out your inbox, help other also clean out their inbox and then change people’s email behaviour to reduce business email overload long term.
It doesn’t matter what your role is in the organisation, PA, EA, CEO, Sales Director, etc., business email overload will be impacting you and your colleagues and can mean time wasted, an important email is overlooked, an email is sent in haste and causes the next email media disaster, an email is open quickly and initiates a cyber attack.
So lets get started aiming for a clean inbox by Friday.
Calibrate how clean is your inbox. Use our Cost of BusinessEmail Overload Calculator and dare to share the results as above.
Share your Clean Out Your Inbox week SMART goals and plans (see above). There are two a prizes for the best sets (copy of ‘Brilliant Email‘ and for PAs and EAs ‘Taking Control of Your Inbox‘).
Each day we will post the Clean Inbox week action for that day. Meanwhile ..
Follow me on Twitter using #cleaninbox.
Join our Facebook page and Like us please.
Tags: Brilliant Email, Business email overload, clean out your inbox week, cost of email overload, Mental Health and Email, Stress and email overload, Take Control of Your Inbox
Mesmo Consultancy is delighted to announce nominations are now being accepted for the 2017 World Email Ping-Pong Challenge. Email ping-pong is a ‘game’ played by millions of employees every day who send pointless emails back and forth instead of picking up the phone. But we digress – we want to find out who are the world’s best email ping pong players.
Have you been in an endless round of email exchanges or spotted a ping pong email game between two people which goes nowhere and often spirals out of control. How many emails did it involve and over how many days/weeks did it last? Tell us what is the longest round of email ping pong you have ever played or spotted? Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded and for the best two responses a copy of either ‘Brilliant Email’ or ‘Taking Control of Your Inbox’.
Please send your nominations either via email or leave your comments on this blog.
Email ping-pong is symptomatic of our addiction to email and poor business email etiquette. Often we forget to use other forms of communication which could be more efficient and solve the problem more quickly, for instance the phone or a face-to-face conversation (live or by video-link).
In January 2017 DMR stats reported that 269 billion emails are sent daily. In 2016 The Huffington Post reported that the average worker spends 6.3 hours a day on their email and The Economist highlighted that processing an email costs the average business just under $1 per email. So ten pointless rounds of email pong-pong means $10 down the sink. Played by ten pairs of employees at least five times a week – your business has now wasted the equivalent of $500 a week. Can you really afford to lose this much profit not to mention time and productivity lost?
Want to bow out of the World Email Ping Pong Challenge to improve performance and reclaim all this lost time and money? Then watch our latest Business Email Etiquette video on how to stop email ping-pong.
Here is a classic email Ping Pong Game in Action
This email ping pong chain is already 12 messages long, and it will start a new ‘set’ with Zack…
If you want to save even more time managing email more efficiently why not call us now about our Brilliant Email Management workshops or buy yourself a copy of either Brilliant Email or Taking Control of Your Inbox.
Tags: Brilliant Email, business email etiquette, DMR Stats, Email ping-pong, Huffington Post, Mesmo Consultancy, Save time dealing with email, Taking Control of Your Inbox, The Economist
On International Women’s Day, it is timely to look at back at some research carried out by Mesmo Consultancy several years ago.
Not surprisingly, it showed that the differences between how men and women operate in business (and socially) carries over into how they communicate. For an in-depth review see Gender and Communication at Work edited by Mary Barrett and Marilyn Davidson and Managing in the Email Office by Monica Seeley and Gerard Hargreaves.
Meanwhile, here is a brief summary of the main difference.
| Criterion | Men and email | Women and email |
| Deleting | Often | Hoarders keeping too much just in case |
| Subject line | Limited | More accurate |
| Salutation | Often none | Nearly always included |
| Tone | Terse | Flowery |
| Content | Shorter, crisper and to the point | Rambling and often flowery |
| Gossip | Often – the main culprits email media disasters | Rarely |
| Imagery | Rarely included, but occasional includes text-speak emoticons | Often use stationary and ‘smiley’s’ |
| Sign-off | Professional, bland but can be terse | Flowery, often uses colour and fancy fonts |
What as changed. Judging by the many emails I see, very little.
For more information and especially how to bridge the gap see first published in Brilliant Email.
Tags: Brilliant Email, business email etiquette, Gerard Hargreaves, International Women's Day, Men's email etiquette, Women's email etiquette
How can you entice people to respond properly and in full to your emails? Try the 5S Formula for writing business emails which are polite, professional and compelling without being either arrogant nor pushy.
Still having trouble getting people to respond to your emails? Click here to benchmark the rest of your email etiquette.
For more tips like these either buy on of my books such as ‘Brilliant Email’ or ‘Taking Control of Your Inbox’ or come on one of Mesmo Consultancy’s email management workshops.
Tags: Answer my email, Brilliant Email, Business email, business email etiquette, Get emails answered, Mesmo Consultancy, Politley ask people to respond to emails, Taking Control of Your Inbox
Today is Information Overload Day when around the world people are trying to combat this silent disease which is zapping our energy. Email is one of the major contributors to information overload. (Although social media now too plays a significant part.)
It’s easy to improve one’s own personal email management but to start really reducing email and hence information overload means engaging your colleagues and then the whole enterprise.
One way is to have an email good behaviour charter to which everyone adheres as closely as possible. Ours is called the Nine Ps of Email Best Practice. Anyone who has attended either a Brilliant Email or Take Control of Your Inbox session will be familiar with it.
Here are the five Ps which can help you make the most difference on Information Overload Day by reducing the rounds of email ping pong and unnecessary emails.
Adopt these five Ps of good email behaviour across your working groups not just on Information Overload Day but everyday. This will significantly help reduce information (and email) overload which has become a burden on not just business but often our social lives too.
For more resources for Information Overload Day click here.
Tags: Brilliant Email, Email Good Behaviour, email overload, Information Overload Day, Take Control of Your Inbox