Reduce Email, Increase Productivity

Wedge is desperate to try the No Reply Necessary Tip that I mentioned the other day but fears:

it would damage relations with my colleagues, friends and random acquaintences [sic].

Yes, I agree that some people might take this the wrong way; however, in a corporate climate where unnecessary email clogs up too many in-boxes, I think we need to gently remind people about productivity.

Here’s a little graph I made for a training session I recently ran on how to use Email effectively.


The column on the left illustrates how much time is wasted per day on email; the column on the right shows what this means in terms of wasted minutes per year.

Effectively, if you’re wasting 15 minutes per day with unnecessary email, you’re wasting almost 4000 minutes per year.

This is one area in business where there is room to reassess how effectively we are using our time.

Use Email Templates

Personally, I recommend clients construct and use effective email templates.

Even if they are as simple as this one I use, they still save time. Over a year, the seconds add up to make minutes.

My personal favourite (Mac) tool for this is MailTemplate by the folks at Mactank.

How are you working to make email more effective?

Email Intelligence at Stockholm’s Påhlmans Handelsinstitut

I’ve just agreed to run a two-day training session for Påhlmans Handelsinstitut (Hagagatan 25B) here in Stockholm in October.

Email Intelligence is a 2 x 3 hour training session specifically aimed at Swedish business people who have to communicate by email in English as an integral part of their daily work.

The course is scheduled for October 28/29 at 13:00-16:00. Talk to Påhlmans Handelsinstitut if you’re interesting in taking the course.

For a course description in Swedish…

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