2005-03-27: If you are using thunderbird and participate in a lot of threaded conversations, do yourself a favor and install quote colors. You will scan your emails that much faster.
2008-02-27:
Here are concrete tips that can help eliminate—as a start—compulsive inboxing during the evenings and weekends. Treat all of them as short experiments and customize.oy. I so need to internalize those. I am terrible at email productivity
- "Batch" email at set times.
- Send and read email at different times.
- Don't scan email if you can't immediately fix problems encountered.
- Don't before i forget people during off-hours.
- Set rules for email-to-phone escalation.
- Before writing an email, ask: "what problem am I trying to solve?"
- Learn to make suggestions instead of asking questions.
2014-04-25: I love productivity hacks like that.
We all get a ton of email. In most cases replying politely can be demanding. But it shouldn't be. When someone sends you an email with "VSRE" in the subject or the body, he/she is expecting a very short answer.