I <3 this cartoon:
(There’s some decent advice about “How to email busy people” in the associated article, too).
I had 486 unread emails in my inbox when I came back from my holiday last week… just one of many reasons why I’m behind on almost everything else!
486: way too many “fucking emails.”
The linked article had good advice, particularly the bit about busy people reading email on smart phones.
I hate having to tailor my messages for people to read on smart phones. And I hate the crappy responses I get from them even more. But such is life. I suppose I do like getting quick replies people send with smart phones.
486 unread e-mails would have me deleting the entire inbox!
Some good advice in that linked article–we’ve found that my boss also likes it if we can summarize the entire e-mail in the subject headline. And yeah, like every other PI I know, he usually responds via smartphone.
Awesome! Wouldn’t it be great if you could use that cartoon as your out-of-office reply? Or your signature? Yeah, I guess that would make me unemployed rather quickly.
I would love to at least use the link to the article in an autoresponse. I literally get 200+ emails a day, and the number that have the same subject line is astounding. Everyone writes “Name-of-technology-platform quote” as their subject. Makes it impossible to sort, filter, or even add follow-up reminders – I would have the same subject line flashing at me multiple times every day!
Welcome back and hope to see you sometime soon. I am sure the time away was worth the huge number of emails to wade through.
SilverFox: no kidding! My heart sank when I saw that blue number upon logging in on my first day back…
Eco: every technology is both a blessing and a curse! On balance, I think the faster replies outweigh the downsides, although I don’t like sending an email that includes three or four questions and getting replies to one or maybe two. Mind you, that happened all the time before smart phones, too!
BeanMom, luckily it was relatively easy to identify a large percentage of them as announcements for seminars / exhibitors / bake sales I’d already missed, or notifications that the air vents / elevators / pure water system were down for scheduled maintenance! Unluckily, it took forever to wade through the remaining messages and weed out the ones that actually needed to go on my epic to-do list!
I pride myself on my informative email subject headings 🙂
Mermaid, that would indeed be awesome, but would indeed get me fired! I’m glad I don’t get as many emails as you, though – 200 a day, wow!
The time away was indeed worth the time spent triaging my inbox!
The problem might be the fucking emails. If you leave for a while and all your emails are fucking, of course there is going to be a population explosion by the time you get back. Please remember to spay and neuter those fucking emails!
You don’t know the half of it… by piecing together the available evidence, I am forced to conclude that while I was gone, my emails had an orgy with my RSS feeds and podcasts, causing major population explosions in all three…
“My emails had an orgy with my RSS feeds and podcasts, causing major population explosions…”
But..but.. that there’s…. miscegenation.
The key is to file the inbox emails into sub-folders. No need to read them all before doing this.
Creative filtering? I like it!