5 rules for effective email communication
How to tame your inbox, reclaim your attention and communicate more effectively.
“Attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit” says Linda Stone. In our modern life environment, attention spans are at their weakest point in human history. Perhaps technology is to blame, in some part I think that's true.
A study by Harvard Business School tracking high-performing CEOs 24 hours a day found that the most effective CEO's were ‘ruthless about not allowing email and other forms of digital communication (like slack or teams messages) take over their time and attention’.
As small business owners, to be able to keep emails and notifications at bay sounds like a pipe dream. But it doesn't have to be, you can reclaim some of that valuable attention of yours, attention that you need to build and grow your business.
Listen to this Insight:
How to tame your inbox
Let me be the first to raise my hand as a bit of an email addict. I love keeping my inbox at zero by days end and responding to emails ultra fast. Perhaps I'm a recovering people pleaser, but let's unpack that another time!
Most of us are in the same boat, battling incoming emails that chew up our time and attention each and every day. The myth of multitasking is a real and present threat. Most of us are working in a state of what researchers are calling 'continuous partial attention'. It’s no surprise then why productivity in Australia has been in a decline for the past decade.
So how can we tame our inbox and get back 10%, 20% maybe even 50% more of our attention — so we can get onto the important work we have to do each day. Here are 5 rules to help.
Rules for effective email
1. Check emails only 3-4 times a day
I personally have found this tactic very helpful and it’s helped me save an hour a day (easily) just by limiting myself to checking emails 3 or 4 times a day — for me that’s in the morning (after my morning routine), then just before lunch, and in mid to late afternoon, or end-of-day.
Why a simple tactic like this works is this: when we work with our emails open and notifications turned on, we are setting ourselves up for distraction by dopamine. Our brain knows it needs to do deep and meaningful work, but emails are in competition to that — because alerts are dopamine monsters. Checking emails is shallow work, it's easy, and we love to do what's easy. We often check and reply to emails as a means of feeling productive and procrastinate the deep work we need to get on with.
The solution? Set times strategically throughout the day to check your inbox. Doing so will reduce the toll of task switching and shallow work.
2. Ruthlessly unsubscribe
Most of us are overwhelmed by many marketing emails sent to us every day. If you were to honestly open and read every single email from every business you've subscribed to over the years I think it's safe to say you're not getting much work done.
So there's two ways to handle the mass volume of promotional and marketing emails that we get. One way is to simply unsubscribe from as much as possible and set up rules and filters to then automate whatever is left that we choose to come into our inboxes. Automation rules can be really effective for keeping things organised.
The second way is to create a seperate personal email for business promotional and other emails. Disconnect this email account from your phone and main work device. Simply log into it via a web browser when you need to check it. This helps reduce notifications that mess with our attention and flood us with dopamine distractions.
3. Only Handle It Once
The OHIO rule, is the acronym for only hand it once. An estimated 37% of emails that require a response or action are deferred after being only partially read. We're reading emails multiple times and doing rework before actioning and closing them off. This is a problem, as Harvard Business Review points out— these seconds add up and it's costing us an average 27 minutes every day in wasted time.
So to save re-reading emails again and again, apply the OHIO rule and do one of 3 things:
DELETE
RESPOND
DEFER
Try first to delete or respond, but if you cannot, then go for option 3. But don't leave it in your inbox, make an action item in your to-do list at a later date to properly handle it once and for all.
4. Use Subject Line Keywords
The first thing your recipient sees is your name and the subject line, so let's make it count. If your subject line is vague or cryptic and says something like 'lets chat' or 'thoughts on this?' — that's likely getting ignored, and it's annoying.
US military personell are famous for using codes in capital letters at the start of a subject line to indicate the purpose of the email.
For example:
ACTION – Compulsory for the recipient to take some action
SIGN – Requires the signature of the recipient
INFO – For informational purposes only, and there is no response or action required
DECISION – Requires a decision by the recipient
REQUEST – Seeks permission or approval by the recipient
COORD – Coordination by or with the recipient is needed
These CODES when adopted create clarity. Imagine quickly glancing at your inbox and theres 50 new emails there. You scan your eyes vertically down the first word of each email - you can clearly see what's INFO and whats' ACTION.
Sometimes military will use an exclamation mark or they will attach an important flag to the email if it needs to be responded to that day (which is a good definition of urgent).
Together, lets apply these codes — because the more people using them the better! Fixing email is a team sport.
5. Bottom Line Up Front
Bottom Line Up Front (or BLUF is the acronym) is another rule used in the military to encourage leading emails with a short statement that declares the purpose of the email and action required. The BLUF should quickly answer the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why. It distills the most important information for the reader in the first line, followed by the details below.
Have you ever read a long winded email only to get to the last sentence that sums up the purpose and action item of the email? This is the opposite of that. Using the Bottom Line Up Front rule, you dispense with the context and get straight to the point up front, then proceed to explain the context and relevant information thereafter. Similar to TDLR - ‘Too Long Didn't Read’, readers can quickly decide in a few seconds, is this something they need to deal with now or later, without having to read paragraphs of text.
Remember, people are overloaded and overwhelmed by emails already. We want to reduce the amount of information required to make a decision.
Summary
Here’s your plan of action today: Apply the 5 rules of effective email communication.
Check emails only 3-4 times a day
Ruthlessly unsubscribe or create a seperate email for promotional content
Only Handle It Once
Use Subject Line Keywords
Bottom Line Up Front
Together let's get tame our inboxes and get email back on track to be the effective tool is can be, instead of the time chewing distraction it so often is.
Parts of this article have been extracted from episode 6 of My Business Guide. Listen here.
Written by Lachlan Nicolson.
