Mike Wise

Toronto-based Journalism Professor

To email, or not to email

We follow the rules for the road, rules for sporting matches, and rules of etiquette at the dinner table. Why don’t more people follow rules when it comes to using email properly?

The latest effort I’ve encountered is a funny, but appropriate flow-chart to help you decide whether or not to send that email. (Click on the preview image for the full flowchart on the Co.Design website)

Email flowchart

TED curator Chris Anderson is also behind the Email Charter, a voluntary code of conduct to help reduce unnecessary email (or at least reduce how much of it you produce).

I wish more people would adopt his ideas. I’ve tried his suggestions, like using OEM in a subject heading, only to have friends ask what that means (end of message).

If I can add one more rule: never reply all to an invite list. I don’t want to be getting your RSVP information.

Mike Wise

, , ,

One response to “To email, or not to email”

  1. Share This Email Charter | Seedwalker

    […] To email, or not to email (thekitchensync.ca) __spr_config = { pid: '4f10f8e4396cef0875000040', title: 'Share This Email Charter', ckw: 'Chris Anderson,Email,End of Message,time management', chan: '', offset: '40', no_slide: '', slide_logo: true, pub: '2012-03-19 11:03:00', url: 'http%3A%2F%2Fseedwalker.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fshare-this-email-charter%2F', header: 'RECOMMENDED FOR YOU' }; var content = document.getElementById('simplereach-slide-tag').parentNode, loc; if (content.className){ loc = '.' + content.className; } if (content.id){ loc = '#' + content.id; } __spr_config.loc = loc || content; (function(){ var s = document.createElement('script'); s.async = true; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.src = document.location.protocol + '//d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net/js/slide.js'; __spr_config.css = 'http://seedwalker.com/?srslide_css=1' var tg = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]; if (!tg) {tg = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];} if (tg) {tg.appendChild(s);} })(); Chris Anderson, Email, End of Message, time management Short URL 0 Comments […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: