About Overcome Email Overload with Microsoft Outlook 2000
Other email material by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood:
A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email
Why I Don't Like Electronic Greeting Cards
Humorous looks at email:
The Dark Side of Web Publishing
Hyphenate or not -- Email or E-mail?
Chapter 6 - Spend Less Time on Responses
Excerpted from Overcome Email Overload with Eudora 5Copyright © 2001 Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
You've cut down on your incoming messages. The ones that still come through are organized and prioritized. Now you need to respond to at least some of them.
Responding to messages usually takes more time than reading messages. Composing is slower than typing: you have to think about what to say, write, rewrite, scratch your head, and rewrite again. Add in the difference between reading speed and typing speed, and you can see that writing a message takes a lot more time than reading one.
Responding to messages more efficiently can therefore save you a lot of time. This chapter will show you how to:
- Recognize what messages don't need a response. If you don't respond to any messages at all, you'll probably hurt your career and friendships. However, there are many cases where you don't need to respond.
- Recognize the right time to respond. It isn't always best to respond to a message the instant that you finish reading it.
- Write common responses once and reuse them. Eudora can help you to respond quickly and effortlessly to common questions.
While these techniques won't completely eliminate the time you spend on replies, they can greatly reduce it.
Don't Respond
It might make sense to ignore some messages. In a perfect world, you would have the leisure to respond to every message carefully and considerately. However, in this world, you have limited time. Furthermore, your correspondents also have limited time: they might not want you to respond.
Don't Say "Thank You" or "You're Welcome"
As mentioned in "Avoid `Thank You' and `You're Welcome'" Don't Thank Your Correspondents Right Away, you probably don't want to regularly send messages that say only, "Thank you" and "You're welcome." It takes time for you and is probably a nuisance for your correspondents. Only send a separate thank-you message if there was an exceptional effort involved. (And if it was that exceptional, send a copy to your correspondent's boss as well.)
It is much better to give thanks in advance or the next time you have reason to send email to them.
Don't Respond to Junk Email
In almost all cases, you should not respond to junk email. While it might feel very good to fire off an angry message or to tell them to stop sending you messages, it probably won't do you much good. A lot of junk email comes from temporary or non-existent accounts, so your message might come right back to you.
Responding might even increase the amount of junk email you get. By giving any reply at all, you let the senders know that your address has a real, live person attached to it. That makes your address more valuable to junk emailers.
If you want to take effective action to people who send junk email, you'll need a fair amount of technical sophistication and time. The excellent book Stopping Spam by Alan Schwarz and Simson Garfinkel (O'Reilly & Associates, 1998) explains the procedure in detail. However, if you had enough free time to take effective action, you probably wouldn't be reading my book.
Don't Answer Messages from Strangers
You do not need to respond to email from strangers. While this might sound mean, the time you spend on strangers is time you aren't spending on the people who matter to you.
If you have any sort of public persona, you might end up getting so many messages from strangers that it can take a long time to answer them all. Thirty minutes, an hour, four hours--at some point you have to stop. While it would be nice of you to respond, it isn't reasonable for people to expect that you will always do so.
Don't Respond to Mailing List Loops
It is a good idea to not respond to any sort of multi-person email arguments. Occasionally, people will get caught in a nasty, self-perpetuating loop between people trying to help and people that they annoy by helping. I saw this happen once:
- Someone subscribed a large number of people to a mailing list without their knowledge or permission. Furthermore, the list was misconfigured so that the list server address and the list name address were the same.
- A lot of people tried to unsubscribe.
- Many people wrote to the list saying something along the lines of, "Look, you idiots, don't write to the list to unsubscribe! Unsubscribe like this ..."
- A bunch of people wrote to the list saying, "I'm not an idiot, the list is misconfigured!"
- More people wrote to the list saying, "Please don't send any more messages about unsubscribing!"
- Even more people wrote to the list saying, "Please don't send any more messages telling people not to explain how to unsubscribe!"
- People responded by saying, "Come on, don't be so mean! I made a simple mistake--you don't have to jump all over me!"
Hundreds of messages went back and forth until unsubscribing was fixed.
The more people on a list, the more likely that such an argument will start; the more people on a list, the more likely that such an argument will get out of control.
If you see a list getting locked into a bad loop like this, shut up and stay out of it. Giving advice almost always makes it worse, unfortunately.
Look at How You Were Addressed
You can sometimes tell if you need to respond to a message by looking at the location of your email address in the message headers. In general, you don't usually need to respond unless:
- you are in the To: header, and
- the message is from someone you have responsibilities towards, and
- the sender has a question.
If you are in the Cc: header, then you probably should not respond unless there is something wrong in the message. Most people don't want to get messages like this:
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From: betsy@flossrecycling.com Cc: john@flossrecycling.com, jim@flossrecycling.com, |
The one exception: you should respond, even if you are only on the Cc: list, if something in the message is incorrect or a problem. For example, suppose a message gave arrangements for a meeting for next Tuesday. If you know that the entire division will be at a conference next Tuesday, you should alert the sender.
Figuring out how you should respond when you are in the Bcc: header is a little trickier. Because Bcc: is sometimes used to spare people from follow-up discussions, it isn't always obvious if you should act as if you were in the To: header or the Cc: header. You probably want to act as if you were in the Cc: header unless there is an obvious request to you in the body of the message.
Be careful with the rule about direct questions: sometimes the sender will have a question but not ask it explicitly. For example the sender might discuss an issue but never actually say that they want a response:
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I was thinking about the report covers. Blue might be better than teal. |
In this case, Mabel didn't actually ask, "What do you think?" but the question is implied. Treat this as a direct question and give a response.
If you need to respond to a message, but won't be able to answer for a few days, it is polite to send a message back. Don't just say that you got the message, however. Say what you need to complete the action and when you expect that the action will be completed:
Read All Messages on a Topic before Responding to Any
Frequently, you are better off reading all of the messages on a topic before responding to any of them. This will help you avoid time-wasting sequences like this:
- Jamshid reads a question on a mailing list.
- Jamshid answers the question.
- Mabel reads the question.
- Mabel answers the question.
- Mabel reads Jamshid's answer.
- Mabel feels stupid.
- Everyone else on the list gets annoyed at having to read two answers to the question.
Here's another common sequence:
- Jose emails a question to Mabel.
- Jose finds the answer on his own.
- Jose sends a message telling Mabel not to bother with the question.
- Mabel reads Jose question.
- Mabel spends an hour researching the question.
- Mabel sends Jose an answer.
- Mabel reads that Jose didn't need the answer.
- Mabel feels stupid.
Don't be like Mabel! If you read all the messages on the same topic before replying to any, then you will know if someone else answered any questions raised. This will save you from composing unneeded messages. As discussed in the introduction to Organize and Prioritize Your Messages, using filters to group related messages makes it much easier to see if there are further messages on a topic.
You might worry that if you don't respond immediately, you will forget to reply. The best way to remember to reply is to create a response window (with the question quoted) as soon as you see that you might need to respond. Then, read all the other messages. If someone else answers the question, you can close the response window. If nobody addressed the issue, the response window will still be open when you finish reading your messages, reminding you to respond.
If you get a message that has multiple issues, it's best to create one response window for each issue, editing each so it has a quote for only that issue. That way, you can keep track of each issue independently.
Use Prewritten Responses
If you send a few basic messages over and over again, consider saving those responses somewhere so that you don't have to retype them. Eudora will let you store prewritten responses or stationery that you can use to respond quickly.
To create stationery with Eudora for Mac OS:
- Open the Stationery Window by selecting Window -> Stationery .
- Click on the New button in the lower left corner.
- Give the new stationery a name.
- Click on the Edit button. A message composition window will appear.
- Type in your message.
- Click on the Save button in the upper right-hand corner of the message composition window.
To create stationery with Eudora for Windows:
- Open the Stationery Window by selecting Tools -> Stationery .
- Right-click in the window.
- Select New . A message composition window will appear.
- Type in your message.
- Select File -> Save As Stationery .
- Type in the name of the stationery,
- Click on the Save button.
Be sure to be extremely polite in your prewritten responses. If all goes well, you'll be using these form letters over and over again, including times when you are tired and/or the person sending the message is in a bad mood. If you are not careful now, someday you'll get an angry response to your stationery messages.
If your prewritten message is vague, you can use it more often than if it is specific. The disadvantage, of course, is that vague responses are more likely to be ambiguous. (I cover ambiguity in great detail in Reduce Ambiguity.) Sorry. Life is full of difficult choices.
To use stationery, select Message -> Reply With... and select the stationery that you want to use. You can also quickly add text from stationery to a message by dragging the stationery from the Stationery Window to the message composition window.
The rest of this section covers examples of some prewritten responses.
Give Directions
Writing good directions takes a lot of time. It is a good idea to write and save good, clear directions for each route:
If you know that someone is coming from a particular direction, you can quickly edit out all the directions that you don't need:
Respond to Vague Questions
Some people write email that is difficult to figure out. (They haven't read Reduce Ambiguity, yet.) Frequently the question will be too vague, like:
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Please send me information about the University of East-Central Illinois at Hoopston. |
This gives no clue about what the sender wants: admission application deadlines? The number of faculty? The acreage? The number of buildings? The name of the Engineering Dean's dog?
If you are in a position where you get vague questions regularly, you can save time by developing an all-purpose response that suggests places to go for further information. For example:
Hopefully, this will either answer the question or make the questioner understand that he or she will have better luck if they ask their questions more carefully.
Even if you can't write a response like the previous example, you can still create a stationery message for responding to vague messages. You might want stationery like this:
"I'm Busy"
You can also use stationery to tell people that you can't give them much attention. For example:
Responses to Mass Mailings
As mentioned in Educate Your Correspondents, you might need to ask people to not send you mass mailings. A carefully written stationery message that asks people not to send you mass mailings can save you a lot of time. This section has examples of stationery you might want to use for discouraging nuisance email.
Hoax Responses
Hoaxes can be extremely annoying, as mentioned in Reduce the Number of Incoming Messages. If you get hoaxes regularly, you can use stationery like the following:
Chain Letters
For chain letters, you could try sending a message similar to the hoax message in the previous section, or you could just explain why you don't want to participate:
Humor Glut Responses
If you like getting jokes, but find them distracting, here is useful stationery to send:
You can then set up your filters to quietly put messages with HUMOR in the subject header into a jokes mailbox, as shown in File Jokes.
Ask for Bcc:
As mentioned in Use Bcc: Instead of To: or Cc:, you'll get fewer messages if you are in the Bcc: header instead of the To: header. If you get a lot of messages that have a huge list of people in the To: header, you might want stationery like this:
Use Auto-Responders
If you are using Paid or Sponsored mode, you can set up your filters to respond automatically to messages. This is useful but dangerous: you might respond inappropriately if your filters misfire. For example, suppose that Rose Winkle, the chief operations officer, sends Mabel a message on the Payroll Department's budget. If Mabel's filters send a message about rose gardening in response to messages that have rose in the header, Rose Winkle will be pretty surprised!
However, if you are absolutely overwhelmed by messages, you could respond with a generic form that gives some information and tells how to bypass the automatic response and get to you. One way to give people a way past your automatic response is to tell people a secret word that bypasses your filters.
Put the secret word on a separate line to make it more obvious.
To respond to messages from strangers that don't have the secret word in the subject, you need to change the default (last) filter in your filter list. (See Default Filter: I Don't Know You):
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when the message comes in or manual filtering is selected |
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when the message comes in or manual filtering is selected then Reply With -> stationery that you choose, |
You should put these filters after ones for getting rid of junk email. Otherwise, you will respond to junk emailers automatically.
Notify That You're Out of the Office
One of the most common uses of auto-responders is to let senders know that the receiver will not be able to read a message for a while:
Unfortunately, because of how email is delivered, setting up an out-of-office message isn't always easy to do. You could set up a filter to always respond, but the filter will only be activated if Eudora is running. If you turn off your computer before you go (or if it crashes right away), nobody will get your out-of-office message.
Where does your email go when your computer is off? It stays on the email server --a computer that is on all the time and whose job it is to receive and hold your mail. Thus the "right" way to set up an out-of-office message is to tell the email server to give an out-of-office message.
There are many different email server programs, and each has its own way of doing out-of-office messages. Worse, you might not have access to the email server. The best thing to do is to go to your Information Technology group and say, "I want to set up an out-of-office message on my email account. What do I need to do?" (You might also suggest that they set up a Web-based interface for managing out-of-office messages; see Out-of-Office Messages.)
Dangers of Auto-Responders
Auto-responders can be very handy, but you need to be careful. Your auto-responder can get caught in a loop. Take the following situation:
- Mabel goes on vacation.
- Andy sends Mabel email.
- Andy goes on vacation.
- Mabel's email program sends Andy a message that Mabel's out of the office.
- Andy's email program sends Mabel a message that Andy is out of the office.
- Mabel's email program sends Andy a message that Mabel's out of the office.
- Andy's email program sends Mabel a message that Andy's out of the office.
- repeat until Andy or Mabel get back from vacation...
Any sort of automatic response can get into a loop, but out-of-office messages are particularly likely to get caught in this kind of loop. During a vacation in January 2000, a major U.S. university had so many "I'm out of the office" loops that they had to take the entire email system down.
You should thus be very careful about autoresponses, especially out-of-office messages. Here are some steps to take to avoid loops:
- Do not reply automatically to messages from your hobby or announcement mailing lists. (You might want to temporarily unsubscribe to your mailing lists until you are back.)
- Do not reply automatically to bounce messages--automatic responses that tell you that a message that you sent couldn't be delivered.
- If possible, only send one message per week to any address. If someone sends you a lot of messages on a regular basis, he or she could get bored with your auto-response.
You should probably ask your system administrator for help setting up your automatic responses.
Summary
- Recognize that you don't have to answer or even read every single message.
- Attach your thanks to other messages. Don't send a thank-you in its own message unless the effort was exceptional.
- You do not need to respond to strangers.
- If you ask questions of strangers, be sure to be very polite. Say "please" and thank them in advance.
- A long and boring all-purpose response will discourage further correspondence.
- If you are in the Cc: header, you shouldn't respond unless there is something incorrect in the message.
- Read all messages on a topic before responding to any of them, but open a response window immediately if you think you might need to reply.
- Use prewritten responses.
- If you use an automatic response system, give a magic word so that people can get your attention if the prewritten response doesn't answer their question.
- Don't respond automatically to mailing lists.
- Don't forget to turn off out-of-office messages when you return.
Go up to Table of Contents
Go back to Chapter 5 - Reduce the Number of Incoming Messages
Go on to Chapter 7 - Reduce Ambiguity