-
Hilarious!
Popularity: 81% [?]
Archive for December, 2008
Never Check Email
I know, that's just silly. How about this instead: don't check email in the morning? I watched a great video featuring Julie Morgenstern, the author of, coincidentally enough, Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work:
This idea of not checking email in the morning plays off of the idea of working on one's Most Important Task before all else, and/or doing the most difficult challenging thing first (as in to Eat That Frog). One thing I liked in the interview was Julie discussing the traits of poor workers:
- Inaccessibility: This is the boss that is never around, but it can also be the employee who always puts others off, or who can never have an impromptu meeting or call.
- Not Walking the Talk: We think that saying "yes" to everything may makes us agreeable and nice, but in fact, if saying yes to everything causes us not to be able to come through on some items, we are doing significant damage to our credibility.
- Multitasking: I've written on this before. However, multitasking also includes responding to email, or surfing the Internet while on a call, or responding to the Blackberry during a meeting.
- Clutter: This is not about what is looks like, but really about whether it is functional. If you can find what you need immediately, you don't have "clutter". If you cannot find things, consider reading Getting Things Done.
I have not read Julie's book yet, but it is definitely on my list of books to check out.
Popularity: 51% [?]
Email Disclaimers
What I would like to see is a standard set for appending legal disclaimers to emails. In this way email client software could hide all this silly text. The email software could, for example, add a link with something like "This email contains disclaimers. Click here to read". Or even simpler, could we just not put a simple link to the disclaimer instead of adding it to each and every email? I heard that the ability to "hyperlink" has become available on the web.
I just read a thread of email where the content was over 80% of the form:
This e-mail (and attachment(s)) is confidential, proprietary, may be subject to copyright and legal privilege and no related rights are waived. If you are not the intended recipient or its agent, any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or any of its content is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. All messages may be monitored as permitted by applicable law and regulations and our policies to protect our business. E-mails are not secure and you are deemed to have accepted any risk if you communicate with us by e-mail. If received in error, please notify us immediately and delete the e-mail (and any attachments) from any computer or any storage medium without printing a copy.
This is not efficient. When a lot of people are replying to these messages, it becomes too easy to miss the actual content when navigating around this "fine print". And that's the problem, in plain text email, there is no real substitute for actual fine print. By the way, while we are at it we could do the same for the email "signatures".
Popularity: 43% [?]
Recent Comments