Email still a massive productivity drain

Another blog on eMail Etiquette

About a week ago, I had a four-hour flight.  I completely cleaned out my inbox before I boarded the plane.

Inbox: 0

For once, I didn’t use the in-flight WiFi to check anything; I just relaxed, read my Kindle on Android, and slept as soundly as I could despite the guy behind me snoring rather loudly. When I landed, I turned on my phone (I swear, American Airlines, it was in airplane mode during the flight), and glanced briefly at my inbox.

Guess how many new e-mails I had? 20? 50?

Nope. I had 100 unread emails.  So roughly 25/hour came in as I was 35K feet above — and this wasn’t even during core working hours.

I am not THAT GUY that wants to return to the days of snail mail. Nor am I one that says we must declare “email amnesty” or “war on email”.  The fact is, e-mail made work effective, yes — and it allowed people on opposite sides of the globe to collaborate in a much easier fashion — but it’s also a giant hit to productivity. A big, fat, time sinking, eyeball tiring, emotions misreading, productivity drain.

Quick stats: 89 billion business-related e-mails were sent daily in 2014; by 2015, that number was 100 billion, and by the end of 2016, it’s going to be around 116B. That’s the equivalent of everyone on the planet sending 15-20 business e-mails per day (which is even more absurd if you consider that only around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today).

E-mail is a productivity problem because while it’s a way to discuss work and projects, it’s not actually work. Typically, e-mails indicate or reference work that needs to be done — and they do so in a distracting way. An average employee needs 64 seconds to recover their thoughts after reading an e-mail, and they get about 200 e-mails per day. Do that math. By and large, 11.2 hours of a 40-hour work week are spent on e-mails — or slightly over 25 percent.

We can do better. Here are some tips.

emails1. Stop the Reply All Culture

Watch this video on the e-mail tree.  You’ve all lived through this. Reply-alls can be a nightmare, especially because they are deeply tied to hierarchy — as more senior leaders begin to respond, others feel the need to chime in. A reply all culture is awful for productivity.

Resist the temptation to reply all.

  • Consider talking directly to the main point person on the project w/any concerns (Skype great for remote colleagues)
  • If you must reply all, begin by thinking about your response and then ask a co-worker if you think it has value

The overall goal for e-mail communication should be value. Frankly, all communication should be about value. Think about the last person that trapped you in the break room telling you stories about their dog when you wanted to finish up an important project.  No e-mail should be sent that doesn’t advance a project or an idea, encourage new thinking about a project, or communicate on a norm or deadline. If the value isn’t there, the e-mail doesn’t need to be sent.

2. Understand To vs. CC vs. BCC

If there were a Miss Manners for email etiquette, I believe she would suggest this:

  • The “To” field is for the main person the e-mail is directed at, or the person with an immediate deliverable from it
  • The “CC” field is for people who should have knowledge of the project, be it tangential team members or senior managers
  • BCC should be used sparingly — in the wrong context without explanation, it can fray trust between collaborators; if someone is going to be BCCed, they can probably just be CCed

3. Consider reviewing email only once or twice a day

Being tethered to e-mail throughout the day is bad for productivity, as seen above. Try doing one sweep in the morning — but limit it to 20-30 minutes, as focusing on e-mail tasks first thing in the morning is a waste of a good energy period for most people — and then one in the afternoon. During the day, focus on deep work and perhaps (gasp) actually talking to people.

If you think to yourself you would be out of the loop only checking e-mail twice a day, well consider that going and talking to co-workers is another form of being in the loop that worked quite well before e-mail ever existed for business.

4. Think then write

This can be hard for some people because work projects do become emotional at times, even when we want them to be logical and process-driven — but please think before you write e-mails, as a major general rule. Virtually any e-mail sent can come back on you in a negative way (hardly an ideal situation), and you don’t want to be seen as a co-worker that clogs up people’s productive time.

There are dozens and dozens of potential rules for e-mailing, but above all, try to follow the same rule you should follow with conversations and meetings: add value and respect the time of others we work with. If you start from there, the rest should fall into place with practice. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Be well. Lead On.
Adam

Related Posts:
Put down your smartphones, people!
Five Core Skills every CIO must continuously improve
Khalil Gibran on Leadership

Adam Stanley

Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog

Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.

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