Email, electronic mail, is a form of delayed communication that many people and companies use. Email can be sent anonymously, from a single person to many, or just to another person, and as such can be used for improving communication, or may result in boxing people in.
Email Jail
Email Jail is when you find yourself stuck wading through emails trying to find the few that are important. What are signs of this?
- Do you receive over 10, 20, 50 emails a day, and none of them are junkmail?
- Do you delete emails that are sent to a group before reading them?
- Do you have ever increasing number of filters and folders?
- Do you not get through all of your new emails in one day?
If you answer Yes to any of these questions, you are most likely in email jail!
Email Jail Bail
If you are looking for a way out of Email Jail, Email Jail Bail, then you need to understand how you got slammed up in jail in the first place.
Email as a Communicative Tool
Email is one of the most common forms of delayed communication, and just about everyone has had an experience with email for personal and work based use. But why does your email at work fill so much quicker, and why is it a task you dread? Yet the only wadding you have to do with your personal email is sort through all the funny forwards!
This is because it can be used as a 1 to 1 tool, 1 to few, and 1 to many.
One to One
Email used as one to one is most common in your personal email. You know these email are for you, so they are worth your time. These emails are best both on a personal level and a business level - for business you know it is a question, request, or communication catered for you that you probably need to take action on.
One to Few
This form of email, you can see all the people the email has been sent to, as such you can gather what it's about. Friday night drinks, a funny article, or maybe even a project update. You know that this email applies to you, but may not require action. No rush to read it.
One to Many
Emails sent to a department, or other group. You can only tell the group it was sent to. These emails may or may not apply to you, they may or may not require your action, it may or may not be worth your time. The email may or not have any relevance to you, and as such wastes away your valuable time while you find out if it does apply to you.
Bail me out Now!
So why should your inbox be overgrown with many to one emails? Well it doesn't need to be, instead you can put communication where it belongs. Using technologies such as Wiki's you can easily place annoucements and news on a seperate website, saving you and everyone else;
- time checking email
- time finding a specific annoucement
- data from being lost, e.g. when an email is deleted and needed again
- data load on your email server
Read Email Jail Bail on a proprosed structure on how you can take the actions to put communications where they belong and unlock your inbox.