Today I want to share a simple strategy for taking back some time and slaying the email overload dragon.  Don’t worry, it’s a simple tip.  Here goes: WRITE LESS.

Not earth-shattering, but deadly effective.  When you spend a few seconds thinking of a response and you just write it out – quickly – you can get your point of view across, make a decision and then send back an email.

I have found that I spend way too much time thinking about how to craft emails to provide the right balance between enough information and answer all the questions I think the recepients might have.  I know now that I’m wasting too much time with the content and format (hey, I’m a slow learner).

The whole process of overthinking email is stupid really when you think about the time I could be using to do more GREAT WORK. 

In short, the idea of shorter emails is to skip the preamble and GET TO THE POINT.  The idea is to save the support and backup documentation for a PowerPoint or attachment (or skip it altogether).  The point is to get better at GETTING TO THE POINT FASTER.  Enough said.

By the way, this post was inspired by Leo Babauta.  Leo tells us that our emails are too long.
In his post he reminded me of this wonderful little site (more like a web page) called 5 Sentences:

I just put their little blurb under my signature file in my emails.  It gets right to the point, don’t you think?

——————————————–
Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es

This way people will know why my once massively detailed emails are now a fraction of the size.  Hopefully I do right by this idea and my emails become smaller AND more powerful.  I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

By the way, are you up for the challenge?  Head over to Leo’s post and find out why long emails suck.  I think you’ll agree….

Why Long Emails Suck

Caveat: There’s always a caveat, right? Sometimes it DOES pay to put more thought and effort into an email and they need to be longer than 5 sentences.  Much longer.  No problem at all, just limit the number of these emails or schedule a BRIEF meeting to go over the information.  Just make sure you have a clear agenda, as few people as possible in the meeting and come away with clear next steps and action items.

PS, Yes, I find it ironic that a post about writing shorter emails was this long.

The easiest way to fight procrastination is to put it off and just get on with doing the task.  All kidding aside, when you just force yourself to do anything – no matter how small – on a task, you instantly put procrastination at bay.

A really simple way to overcome procrastination is to send a quick email or jot a follow-up list to your direct report.  Now instead of thinking about sitting down with them to go over stuff you want them to do, you already set that work in motion.

If you can’t seem to find time to talk about important things with your boss, just fire off a quick email with some simple bullet points to update them on your progress or let them know what decisions you need from them.

Yes, it can be this simple.  Leverage the tools you have at your disposal, like email, to quickly make progress on your To Do List (read: Get Done List)

By the way, I call this little idea Email Task Bombing because you’re literally firing off dozens of email replies  to emails that are sitting in your inbox.  Fire through them as quickly as you can and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your inbox empties…and how much work you can get done.

Net takeaway: Stop overthinking things.  Open an email from your inbox and do something.  Email Task Bombing.  Get it done!!!