Tag: email

Queries for good email management strategies

Inbox ZeroThe new calendar year is a great time to think about how you manage your personal and work/organizational email accounts.  I know that I benefit from the opportunity to purge or rotate out some old folders, delete large attachments just sitting around taking up space, and think about how well my setup is working for me in my daily workflow.

There are a lot of different strategies out there and each person has to find what works best for them.  Here are a few queries that might help you think about how well your strategy is working for you:

  1. Are you able to work through your e-mail inbox in a reasonable amount of time every day, respond to or delegate time-sensitive questions/comments, convert messages into to-do items, or otherwise file them away on the first pass through?
  2. Do you make good use of e-mail filters available in your mail reading program to highlight/tag/sort messages in ways that make you more productive? Continue reading "Queries for good email management strategies" →

Can the President of the U.S. use e-mail?

The Times has a nice little article today about why Barack Obama will probably have to give up the use of his Blackberry - and e-mail altogether - when he becomes President:

As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

Surely there's some middle ground to keep a President as tech-savvy as Barack Obama from being forced off of e-mail altogether? I mean, this is the guy who announced his VP pick by SMS text message, for crying out loud.

Here are some scenarios to explore: Continue reading "Can the President of the U.S. use e-mail?" →

6 tips for good email message subject lines

Writing good subject lines in your email messages is important. As email continues to serve as a primary communication tool for many people, and as our inboxes are filled up with ridiculous amounts of stuff that we may or may not need to actually act on, we will all benefit from writing good subject lines that save time and improve productivity.

My suggested tips for success: Continue reading "6 tips for good email message subject lines" →

E-mail messages I delete without reading

Life's too short. E-mail messages I tend to delete without reading (other than obvious spam):

  • Messages with a blank subject line
  • Messages with a blank body, with only a mysterious attachment that's supposed to explain everything when I open it
  • Pretty much anything from Network Solutions / Verisign
  • Anything that asks me to forward it to 11 of my friends for good luck
  • Messages that start out by declaring that "this is not spam"
  • Messages with more than three (3) consecutively-placed exclamation points in the subject line or greeting

What about you?