You sent me an email and didn’t hear back? This might explain it:
OK so it’s not a serious decision chart. But it’s beginning to look increasingly attractive!
I always have the best of intentions when it comes to keeping up with my email correspondence. But increasingly I find myself struggling to keep up. The problem isn’t so much the volume, as the expectations. I have a constant stream of email asking me for stuff – presentations, reviews, advice, comment. Each request is important to the sender I’m sure. But if you are asking me to do something that I’m not directly paid to do, doing what you ask means that I to sacrifice something else to respond. And that inevitably ends up being my personal time, family time, meal time or sleep time.
That said, I don’t begrudge people asking me to do things for them, and I usually try and accommodate requests. But if you have sent me an email that seems to have disappeared into a black hole, the chances are that it has been swamped by hundreds of others like it, or I had to decide whether to spend time with my wife and kids or with your request. And if it was really important, there’s never any harm in resending!
Note: In the “Is it from someone important?” box, I should point out that this includes family and friends!
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Hi Andrew, I must say that looking at this chart makes me feel guilty of having sent you an email about a month ago (with no response!). In my defence I can say that you do present yourself as a “free consultant” just by hosting this blog, and initiating lots of useful discussions. Chi è causa del suo male pianga se stesso
(Italian say..) But please, keep up this great blog, and I promise never to send an email again!
No, please don’t stop the emails – I’ll just become paranoid and lonely then! Just don’t expect a quick response
And I’m still trying to work out what to make of the “free consultant” perception – deeply disconcerting!
Dr. Maynard, perhaps asking people to put a phrase into the subject field: Question, Interview Request, Copies of Presentation, etc. would help with your decision making and organization of requests.
In terms of “free consultant”, your time is valuable, and you are only one person. Perhaps you give non-commercial requests 15 minutes “gratis” and then charge a fee for multiple or lengthy discussions, and ask commercial groups to be fair to you, and pay a consultancy fee. We are talking about your children’s education and more.
Your blogs take time for you to write, and they are invaluable. So thank you for continuing those.
Cordially,
HCG
Thanks Helen.
On my bad days I’m tempted to remind people of my consultancy rates – but that would just be churlish!
Unfortunately, having once worked for an email-driven organization where people got yelled at for not responding immediately to emails sent by colleagues working 20 feet away (even if you were – you know – writing something that required actual thought!), I’ve concluded that if I don’t respond to emails as they’re received they don’t get replied to. Setting up a triage system for them is just more work that involves hunting and pecking through emails trying to find them again.
One thing that does seem to help is setting up filters so they go directly to folders. Searching within a folder takes a lot less time than searching through 10k emails. But I think the same principle of time management someone told me once – only handle a piece of paper once – is the goal re emails. Otherwise you spend more time organizing your emails than actually dealing with them.
Andrew,
Love the chart!!!!
If you haven’t had chance you might like the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen [ no not the comedian Dave Allen......]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
The Getting Things Done method rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.
he has a 2 minute rule that if it takes less than 2 minutes just do the task….
Only issue is when you have a 100 emails x 2 mins = boat loads of time!
the tip of putting the actual request in the email header is a great one
And only one topic per email is another
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