Most emails are badly written. No surprise, perhaps, since we write more emails than anything else. By 2010, the business world will have produced 27,000 billion gigabytes of email . So what goes wrong?

• Not written with the reader in mind
• Not written to be scanned or read quickly
• Too many topics in one email
• Important information or requests buried in verbiage
• Reply in haste, repent at leisure
• Poor grammar, spelling and punctuation
• Using email when some other communication would have been better

So I have drafted ten laws for better email:

1. Email is about the reader, not the writer.
2. Email exists to solve problems, not create them .
3. The headline is the email .
4. Fewer words, greater understanding .
5. Emoticons rule!!
6. Think before you forward .
7. Respect privacy in group emails .
8. Be succinct .
9. Highlight actions and key points . I
10. Wait a minute .

For more information on each of these points visit the Bad Language Blog .
Here are some other posts on topic of email.

• How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 1
• How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 2

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Related posts:

1. How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 1 After years of digital coaching I have realized that most...
2. How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 2 If you haven’t checked out Part 1 look it over....

The rifle round can change the course of history, the fire cracker amuses children. Does your life look like a rifle round or a fire cracker?

When God calls us to go somewhere He simultaneously calls us to not go anywhere else. For example, when God called Paul to Macedonia He thereby called him not to go to Asia. We, like Paul, cannot be two places at once or do two things at the same time.

If we want to change the world for God we must learn to say “no.” He wants us to focus our lives just like a round is focused down the barrel. As God gives direction, hold on to it for dear life. View every decision through the prism of “how will this help me fulfill the purpose God has given me for this season?” You must say “no” to anything outside your vision. When you say “yes” to distractions you are saying “no” to the things God has called you to do.

Focus.

It is better to do a few things well than to do many things poorly. Do ing less means no ing more. Jesus had to say “no” often because he focused on the will of His Father.  Could you imagine how the crowds must have felt when He just up and left to spend time with God?  He had a vision for His life and he stuck to it, even to the point of death.

Getting vision is like putting on glasses. The world becomes clear, yet God calls us to more. He wants us to put the rifle to our shoulder and zoom in on the scope. He wants to refine our vision. That means not looking at most of what you can see so you peer into the impossible. Once you have that vision for your life you can see what you must do and what must not do.  Jesus changed the world by focusing on twelve men. He aimed for the impossible and hit His mark. God has placed us where we are for tactical and strategic Kingdom victories.  We must not despise the day of small beginnings.

When seeking God for vision and direction for our lives we must ask the question: How does what I am doing glorify God and bring me closer to Him? Are we  glorifying God as we pretend to sin in video games? God does not take joy in the death of the wicked yet we are pretending to kill wicked people in violent computer games.

However, for most of us it would be difficult to prove how gaming or entertainment for that matter fits within the plan God has for our lives. Our focus becomes muddled between serving God and pleasing ourselves. At best entertainment is a diversion. At worst it is a deadly distraction pulling us away from the true adventure God has called us to live. Entertainment can not only take time away from kingdom pursuits, it also can cause our minds to dwell on that which is unholy.

No related posts.

They go into more detail on each point. Here is the cliff notes of a recent Lifehacker article. Their advice is bold My comments are not

1. “Batch” email at set times. This is huge. I process my inbox to zero and then when I get a chance I batch reply to the emails in the “Need Reply” folder. I would spend even less time on email if I checked it less often but I am a bit compulsive.
2. Send and read email at different times. – This is hard to do if you use a web based email program like gmail. If you use Outlook it also helps to turn off automatic send and receive. This allows you to batch your email (see point #1)
3. Don’t scan email if you can’t immediately fix problems encountered – Employing this trick is what saves me so much time. I used to read and re read emails over and over without doing anything about them. Now I put them into one of my folders and don’t worry about it again until I get a chance to act or reply.
4. Don’t BIF people during off-hours. BIF stands for Before I Forget.
5. Don’t use the inbox for reminders or as a to-do list. I put my actionable emails together in a “Need Action” folder. This way they don’t clog my inbox and I can keep track of them.
6. Set rules for email-to-phone escalation. Sometimes a 3 minute phone call can save you from 30 minutes of email. A good rule of thumb I learned from my dad is this:

   If emotions are involved use the phone instead.

   Emotionally charged emails need too much proofing to be worth it. Too often even after spending 30 minutes on drafting an email the recipient still misinterprets it. If you are too angry to make a phone call you are too angry to send an email.

7. Before writing an email, ask yourself: “what problem am I trying to solve?” or “what is my ideal outcome?” Don’t send purposeless emails. They waste everyone’s time.
8. Learn to make suggestions instead of asking questions. The “where do you want to eat? I donno where do you want to eat?” passive question asking mindset does not make for efficient email processing.

How do you handle your email load? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Related posts:

1. How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 1 After years of digital coaching I have realized that most...
2. 10 Laws for Better Email If you ever feel overwhelmed or frustrated with email this...

After years of digital coaching I have realized that most people stink at email. Here are the two people I most often encounter:

Person A: This person spends hours checking email each week sending and receiving dozens of emails every day. Yet, Person A seems to be always behind in email regardless of how much time he or she invests in it. If you work a white collar job you probably can relate to Person A.

Person B: Person B doesn’t care much about email and so he never checks it. You never know if this person gets your emails or not because he rarely responds and when he does it’s days later. If you go to UMHB you are probably like Person B.

So how do you stay on top of you email without it consuming your life?

The following video has changed my life when it comes to email. I now spend half the time doing email and I am always able to leave my inbox empty. How do I do it? I follow Merlin Man’s advice.

I had a folder for each activity and a folder for each person who sent me a lot of email. The problem of this system was that it was inefficient. Instead of having one inbox I had a dozen. Now all important mail comes to one place from which I send it to one of the following 6 folders/labels.

1. Encouragement – These are nice emails people have sent me. I don’t use this folder much (it only has 7 emails right now) but it is nice to set aside encouragement for a rainy day.
2. Need Action – These are my action related emails. If you email me and ask me to do something it will end up in this folder before I do it.
3. Need Read – These are emails I need to read when I get a chance
4. Need Reply – These are emails I need to reply to.
5. Reference – These are emails I will need later. This folder is mostly full of book related emails I need to keep track of.
6. Unimportant – I have setup so that anything unimportant (facebook etc) goes to this folder. This is my only folder that has mail rules related to it.

Most emails I scan and then archive. Only a few make it to one of these folders. Gmail lets me search through my archive which is helpful in finding an email I need when I need it. I don’t need to file school email in a school folder. I just search for the exact email I need and it comes up.
Inbox Zero by Merlin Man

In this video Merlin Mann, productivity guru and creator of the popular 43 folders website, shares his secret to keeping his email inbox at zero. I know its an hour long… But if you invest an hour into learning how to “do” email more efficiantly it will come back to you many times over.Does your inbox overwhelm you? Leave a comment and tell me what do you think.

Related posts:

1. How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 2 If you haven’t checked out Part 1 look it over....
2. 10 Laws for Better Email If you ever feel overwhelmed or frustrated with email this...