Tag Archives: bored

Email Etiquette 101

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Emails are abundant in the day to day.

And I’m not using the word abundant lightly. I’m sure everyone who is active on the internet can sympathize with waking up to 30 new unread emails – on a good day.

Email Rules to Live By

I would like to point out a few rules to live by, when it comes to sending emails to anyone.

  • Signing up to a mail list is permission marketing. They want to receive your emails. This puts the onus on the email sender to provide relevant, personal, and necessary information in the communication.
  • Don’t amalgamate email lists, this will lose subscribers interest very quickly – and also known as spamming. This doesn’t mean don’t cross promote. If another site/person’s message is relevant and you suspect your readers will benefit from it, by all means promote it. That’s why they love you.
  • If you expect the subscriber to spend 5 minutes to read your email, is it not fair to expect you to take 5 minutes to go through your contact list and make sure their information (merge tags) (ie. first name, last name, company, etc.) are updated and populated with proper vitals?
  • If there is no particular reason for the email, why are you even hitting that send button? Nobody wants unnecessary emails clogging up their flow.
  • Did you just cc (carbon copy) somebody in on an email and there is no identifiable reason why they should have been included in the communication?
  • If you’ve been discussing a plethora of items with a co-worker, client, etc., and one particular item needs other members involved in the communication, take the time to compose a new email with a new email subject with: an overview of where the discussion is at, any relevant background information, followed by specific requests. Don’t waste my time by making me go through the entire conversation history trying to understand why I was just included in this communication, and if there is anything I’m supposed to be doing.
  • Just cc’ing somebody at the end of a long conversation is extremely frustrating, not to mention the possibility of breaching confidentiality or exposing a level of formality between you and a contact only achieved after a long discussion or many messages.
  • Remember, you’re a person and you’re engaging somebody on a personal level – much like letter mail – so focus on being coherent, precise, and easy to understand. Unless, of course, you’re a unique writer sending out abstract writing short stories…
  • If you’re not getting responses from email subscribers, it’s not their fault. It’s your email, it’s your message, it’s your content, it’s you pressing the send button. This is your image and it is your engagement as a producer to your subscriber; make the communication valuable and if it’s not, change it up.
  • If your message/request is exciting, alluring, clear, and cohesive, you might convince me to do it. Otherwise, you have very little chance to engage me and I’m going to get bored after reading the 2nd line in the email.
  • If your message/request isn’t exciting, alluring, clear, and cohesive, I will not respond to it immediately which risks the hazard of being buried in my inbox.
  • If you have an email, and a call to action, there had better be a hyperlink for me to click to follow your directions. This makes it easy for me, and also smoothly directs the flow to your website, event page, etc.
  • “When does this end? And why am I even waiting for this to end?” <~ this is not a good reaction to an email.

I’ve amalgamated this from a variety of sources over the years (Seth Godin in particular), and my own personal experiences.

Do you have any other email taboos you’d like to illuminate? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Productive Procrastination

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168. Man Sitting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art 9-9-2008

A lot of time is spent procrastinating about events that are on the ‘to-do’ list. I know, I’m guilty as charged, and I’m sure some of you are too, after all, were all human. Unless you’re an alien from a far away galaxy that’s monitoring our inter-waves like some galaxial cowboy tracking my reports because your trying to flatter me, then yes, indeed you are human.

Now, as procrastination sticks in, my thought process goes, what is it that I’m getting tired or bored of doing, or just annoyed at having to do? Then I also find myself with thoughts going through my head of other things that I’d rather be doing, not necessarily unproductive thoughts, just not productive in the current task undertaken.

So I go ahead and get distracted; clean the fish tank, write a blog, order some pizza, have a cup of tea, or clean the washroom.

A revelation I’ve had now is that this is productive procrastination. This isn’t bad in the traditional sense.

Yes, it’s a distraction, but it’s still getting things done. I have a to-do list most days out of the week, and with this kind of procrastination, it’s getting done! I’m finding that all my tasks are getting done, and I’m staying sane at the same time. It’s hard to stay focused on one topic, subject, or medium for one great length of time, so it’s always good to get a break.

I find that it helps me focus better when I come back, I feel refreshed and alert and awake. It is really healthy to get the blood moving regardless of if you are changing your focus or not. Sitting in one place for to long, you will find that your blood starts to pool into your ass and legs, and your brain starts to loose its freshness (bad things).

In fact, I’m not sure if its rumor or not, but one of my university professors told the class that studies have been made, showing that if you exercise for 15 minutes your ability to learn, process, or test is heightened by at least 15% capacity.

exerciseball

So what I’m saying is to get up and walk around even if you aren’t looking for a distraction. Even pace around the room, stretch your legs, do some favorite yoga moves, whatever it be, just get some exercise and blood flowing through your veins. But remember, procrastination is something that nobody can ignore, it happens even to the most focused of people, but if you procrastinate in such a way that you can productively be moving forward in your day, then there is no need to feel any kind of regret or mal content with what your doing, stay positive!