Ian's Messy Desk » E-mail http://www.ismckenzie.com Helping you get the most out of the 24 hours in your day. Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:15:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 7 Tips for Effective Email Communication http://www.ismckenzie.com/7-tips-for-effective-email-communication/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/7-tips-for-effective-email-communication/#comments Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:01:32 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/09/04/7-tips-for-effective-email-communication/ Posted in Communication Tuesday

effective emailThere is something about e-mail that fosters poor communication habits. Users see it as a form of instant communication and therefore, doesn’t require the same care and attention that a letter might.

For many organizations, e-mail has become the preferred means of communication, both formal and informal. Here are some tips to make your e-mail as effective and efficient as possible:

  1. Use short paragraphs. E-mail is generally read from a computer screen. Keep your paragraphs short –50 words or less– to ensure maximum readability.
  2. Get personal. Use second person terms. Words such as “you”, “your”, and “yours” let the recipient know you’re thinking of them specifically.
  3. Don’t send spam. This includes forwarding every bad joke and poem your second cousin sends you. People don’t like receiving junk paper mail at home and they don’t like the electronic version either. If you’re building a new relationship with a customer, don’t bury them in your sales spam.
  4. Check spelling and grammar. You should invest as much effort in checking the content of e-mail as you do any other written communication. A sloppy e-mail message will communicate negatively about your professionalism.
  5. Include a signature section. Most e-mail software will automate this process for you. Your signature should include your name, job title, contact information, and company name.
  6. Respond efficiently. Develop at set of personal rules for processing your email in a productive way. Read: @ 43 Folders
  7. Ignore the above tips. If you exchange a large number of messages with a particular co-worker, create a set of rules to optimize the way you each process e-mail. You can develop short cuts and templates that bypass some of the above tips and steps because you have worked out you own protocols.

For further reading:

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]]> http://www.ismckenzie.com/7-tips-for-effective-email-communication/feed/ 1 Attachment feature in Gmail http://www.ismckenzie.com/attachment-feature-in-gmail/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/attachment-feature-in-gmail/#comments Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:52:39 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/07/26/attachment-feature-in-gmail/ I stumbled across an feature in Gmail. I replied to an e-mail stating that I was unable to open the attachment I had been sent. When I hit send, Gmail popped up a confirmation dialogue.

If the word “attachment” appears in the body of an e-mail message, and there is no file attached, a dialogue box pops up asking, “It appears that you wanted to attach a file to this email. Send anyway?”

A useful feature if one forgets to attach the file, but not so much when discussing one’s need to hog the television remote.

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]]> http://www.ismckenzie.com/attachment-feature-in-gmail/feed/ 0 Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog http://www.ismckenzie.com/microsoft-office-outlook-team-blog/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/microsoft-office-outlook-team-blog/#comments Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:19:15 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/06/13/microsoft-office-outlook-team-blog/ For those of you who use Outlook as your productivity software/groupware, there’s now a team blog where you can find out what’s going on with Outlook.

We want to make it easier for everyone to find information, directly from the source, about the way Outlook works and how to get the most out of our product. We’ll be talking about what we’re working on, how we decide what to do next, and cool things you can do with the product.

Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog : Welcome to the Office Outlook team blog!.

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]]> http://www.ismckenzie.com/microsoft-office-outlook-team-blog/feed/ 0 Bits and Pieces – April 13 http://www.ismckenzie.com/bits-and-pieces-april-13/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/bits-and-pieces-april-13/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:00:51 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/04/13/bits-and-pieces-april-13/
  • Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week – Plan for and do the big items first and let the smaller items fall in around.
  • Clearing Your Inbox with Minimal Pain – An 8–step blueprint for an empty inbox. It works well. I cleared out my inbox in an hour or so on Tuesday.
  • David Byrne on PowerPoint: Freedom — who needs it? – When you pick up a pencil you know what you’re getting — you don’t think, ‘I wish this could write in a million colours.’

    • Recommended: Zen to Done Productivity eBook The Ultimate Simple Productivity System

    ]]>     http://www.ismckenzie.com/bits-and-pieces-april-13/feed/ 0     How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips http://www.ismckenzie.com/how-to-use-gmail-as-a-business-diary-and-more-tips/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/how-to-use-gmail-as-a-business-diary-and-more-tips/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:35:28 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/04/09/how-to-use-gmail-as-a-business-diary-and-more-tips/ Last month I pointed to a couple of Steve Rubel posts about using Gmail as a personal nerve centre. Steve has posted a follow-up to those tips called, “How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips.”

    In this new post he looks at four tips:

    • How to turn Gmail into a business diary (Gmail + Jott/Callwave + GCal or Yahoo/MSN  calendar)
    • How to annotate books with Gmail as you read them (Gmail + Amazon.com + Google Toolbar)
    • How to get critical alerts in Gmail exactly at the right time (Gmail/GTalk + RSS + Feedcrier)
    • How to use Gmail into a searchable river of news-style RSS reader (Gmail + GReader + RSSfwd)

    My Gmail use has grown in the 5 or 6 weeks since the first set of posts. I can see a whole bunch more added from these tips.

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    ]]>     http://www.ismckenzie.com/how-to-use-gmail-as-a-business-diary-and-more-tips/feed/ 0     Using Gmail as Your On-line Brain http://www.ismckenzie.com/using-gmail-as-your-on-line-brain/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/using-gmail-as-your-on-line-brain/#comments Fri, 02 Mar 2007 16:27:06 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/03/02/using-gmail-as-your-on-line-brain/ Steve Rubel posted a couple of pieces this week on using Gmail features —coupled with other services— as a personal nerve centre. As a couple of these tips provided solutions to things I have been toying with, I quickly set them up. (Quickly not only refers to my response time, but that most of these tips are easy to implement.)

    Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center covers:

    • How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
    • How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
    • How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
    • How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal +  GTalk + iMified)
    • How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)

    More Ways to Use Gmail as a Personal Nerve Center covers:

    • Create a Mobile Searchable Database of PDFs (Gmail + Adobe PDF Conversion by Email)
    • Archive Your Weblog and Comments and Make Them Searchable (Gmail + FeedBurner/FeedBlitz)
    • Import a Searchable Version of Your Calendar (Gmail + Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar)
    • Build a Weather or Sports Almanac (Gmail + Windows Live Alerts)
    • A round up of other ideas

    If you’re using Gmail and have loads of your storage space available —I still have 87% after 3 years of use— these tips can make Gmail much more than just an e-mail system.

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    Recommended: Zen to Done Productivity eBook The Ultimate Simple Productivity System

    ]]>     http://www.ismckenzie.com/using-gmail-as-your-on-line-brain/feed/ 1     Bits and Pieces – February 23 http://www.ismckenzie.com/bits-and-pieces-february-23/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/bits-and-pieces-february-23/#comments Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:53:14 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/02/23/bits-and-pieces-february-23/
  •  – Web Worker Daily some ideas for moving your e-mail archive from a disaster zone to a useful resource.
  • Evolution of my e-mail setup – an overview of how this e-mail system went from chaos to lean and mean.
  • Begin, again – I pointed at this a couple of years ago, but it bears repeating. Bren looks at restarting when you fall off the GTD wagon.
  • What’s on Jason’s Hard Drive – scanning your paper files and storing them electronically.
  • New mind mapping videos on YouTube – more mind mapping how-to’s posted on YouTube.
  • 10 New Uses for Coffee Filters – from a flash diffuser for photography to cleaning window, here a 10 alternate uses for paper coffee filters.
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    Recommended: Zen to Done Productivity eBook The Ultimate Simple Productivity System

    ]]>     http://www.ismckenzie.com/bits-and-pieces-february-23/feed/ 0     Google Docs & Spreadsheets integrates with Gmail http://www.ismckenzie.com/google-docs-spreadsheets-integrates-with-gmail/ http://www.ismckenzie.com/google-docs-spreadsheets-integrates-with-gmail/#comments Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:30:40 +0000 Ian McKenzie http://www.ismckenzie.com/01/29/google-docs-spreadsheets-integrates-with-gmail/ has cranked it up another notch by integrating with Gmail. You can now open documents and spreadsheets directly from the Gmail message to which they are attached.

    Whenever those of you who use Gmail receive a spreadsheet or a document in an email, you will see a new link next to the “Download” link that says “Open as a Google document.” Click on that and the attachment will automatically be imported into Docs & Spreadsheets and added to your personal document list where you can make changes, invite collaborators and search for it later.

    Official Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog: Docs & Spreadsheets integrates with Gmail

     

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