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    Work email

    I send about 30 to 40 emails a day at work. I receive many more than that, but they don't count as many are chains I've been cc'd into for the most tenuous of reasons.

    I like email, it's simple, allows me to work from home when I don't have meetings to attend at work and most importantly, it's accountable. There are lots of negatives related to the last point, but overall it's a positive for me.

    I'm not a big fan of using the phone or Office Messenger. I find both are used to slag people off after meetings or outside of email chains. One of the main reasons I don't like to go into my workplace's HQ is that I'll invariably be hot-desked next to someone spending the whole day phoning everyone after a team-meeting describing how such and such a person doesn't understand our vision.

    Anyway, on average, how many emails do you send each day at work?

    #2
    Work email

    Depending on how busy I am, 20-50. Sometimes more if there's back-and-forth, although I try to nip that in the bud with a phone call or a meeting.

    I like email. I've used various corporate messengers - Lync, Jabber, etc - and I've used Slack outside work. But I like the lack of expectation of an immediate response (I read an article somewhere about leaving Slack that called email 'asymmetric', which seemed to fit). I like that I can consider a response.

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      #3
      Work email

      I've used Slack outside work. But I like the lack of expectation of an immediate response (I read an article somewhere about leaving Slack that called email 'asymmetric', which seemd to fit)
      Asynchronous seems more appropriate.

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        #4
        Work email

        Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote:
        In personal terms, I love receiving emails from friends. Long ones especially though they tend not to arrive so often any more as most people now do their casual electronic communications through social media.
        Me too. When email really became a thing in the late 90s, there was talk of how it had 'revived the art of letter-writing'. That lasted as long as it took for Facebook (especially) to become a thing.

        I still have one friend I exchange 'real' letters with. Long ones including, but not limited to, lots of sports talk (football especially). I love that even more. Maybe I should start a 'real letters' thread, come to think of it.

        As to the thread topic, it really depends, largely on whether there's an important meeting coming up or just gone.

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          #5
          Work email

          Ginger Yellow wrote:
          I've used Slack outside work. But I like the lack of expectation of an immediate response (I read an article somewhere about leaving Slack that called email 'asymmetric', which seemd to fit)
          Asynchronous seems more appropriate.
          Yes. That might actually have been what the article said, and I misremembered.

          Edit - yes, I did: https://medium.com/better-people/slack-i-m-breaking-up-with-you-54600ace03ea#.3vx3r3xa3

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            #6
            Work email

            We've become a very email dependent organisation.

            I probably send at least 50 a day, and receive several hundred.

            The widespread adoption of email has definitely cut down on the number of informal, in person conversations we have, though I do wonder if that would have happened without email, given our more than doubling in size.

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              #7
              Work email

              You should always feel able to ignore emails - if it's important, they'll ring.

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                #8
                Work email

                I sent four work emails in June. Three of them just forwarding something that had been sent to me by mistake...

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                  #9
                  Work email

                  I get about 300 a day.
                  I probably send about 10 or so.
                  My team do all our bullshit on Skype and WhatsApp

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                    #10
                    Work email

                    Email is so much better than phone calls for most work stuff. It means I can prioritise what I respond to. It means I have a record of what people have asked me. It means I have time to think about how I'm going to respond.

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                      #11
                      Work email

                      I used to set up rules where emails that were CCed to me went in a special folder. Which I would maybe skim read once a week. Or ignore.

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                        #12
                        Work email

                        About 100 a day, but only three of those warrant a direct response from me. Of about ten more I'm happy to be on the receiving end because I want to know what's going on. The others I can take or leave. Substantially better than phone calls though. Why anybody in this day and age still makes phone calls beyond the most urgent of all emergencies is beyond me.

                        I do have a policy of not reading my work email outside of office hours. I used to forward everything to my personal gmail account, but this drove me completely insane on the weekends when my smartphone would light up with a notification every five minutes. Separating my work and private life in this matter has been a very healthy thing.

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                          #13
                          Work email

                          Stumpy Pepys wrote: I used to set up rules where emails that were CCed to me went in a special folder. Which I would maybe skim read once a week. Or ignore.
                          I had that, but I don't get alerts on Good for Enterprise (smartphone email thingy) on sub folders of my inbox and therefore got caught out a couple of times. Good for Enterprise is a great tool for working in the pub, or at the beach as I did this afternoon.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Work email

                            Stumpy Pepys wrote: I used to set up rules where emails that were CCed to me went in a special folder. Which I would maybe skim read once a week. Or ignore.
                            I do the same. And there are times where I get CCed and it's really something that I should not be involved in--like I tell someone that they need to email someone else and not me, and they keep me on the recipient list--I'll do a "Always move messages in this conversation to..."

                            My volume can vary greatly. Yesterday I only sent 25 emails. Today after 4 hours I'm already up to 37. Yesterday I received around 120.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Work email

                              I send about 15-20 and get who knows how many... maybe 50 or 100. I don't know.

                              Within the company, I email just two people primarily, and then assorted IT, accounting, admin people here and there.

                              We do Skype chat and skype voice, either one on one or conferences. That seems to work pretty well.

                              Supposedly there are like three PR people for every journalists and I can really feel that day to day. About half the emails I get are pitches or press releases from PR people. I respond to some but usually just put them in a folder to keep track of device approvals and M&A or forward them to other reporters that might cover that. I also get a fair number of pitches that have nothing to do with anything any of our pubs cover.

                              *I don't answer my phone at all unless I know who is calling. I do interviews by phone because...tradition, I guess. When the subject answers questions by email, it looks more canned and therefore less journalismish, even if it's clearer.

                              Indeed, I'm of the modern opinion that just calling somebody on the phone without agreeing to by text or email is borderline rude. I don't have a "real" phone at all. Just my iPhone, with the same Maryland area-code I got five phones and about 15 years ago. Soon, area codes will mean nothing.

                              As comedian Gary Gulman accurately observed, the phone-call function is just a seldom-used app on my "phone," and calling an iPhone a phone is like calling a Lexus convertible a cup-holder.

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                                #16
                                Work email

                                I may be inadvertently annoying people in work. My first option is to pop over to their desk if they are in my building or one of the other two offices in walking distance, then phone call and finally email.

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                                  #17
                                  Work email

                                  I used to work with a guy who, if he had to reply to an email, would do so very promptly, but would only use one of the three following messages:

                                  1. Yes
                                  2. No
                                  or
                                  3. No way

                                  I wish more people were as effective with their time as he was.

                                  As for the phone thing, I change jobs every 3-6 months or so and make/receive actual phone calls with recruitment agencies on a daily basis, and cannot see any way more effective of getting results.

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                                    #18
                                    Work email

                                    sw2bureau wrote: You should always feel able to ignore emails - if it's important, they'll ring.
                                    I believe the exact opposite.

                                    Although PR people often do both.

                                    If they call and I talk to them, they have to email me all the details anyway, so why not start with that?

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                                      #19
                                      Work email

                                      andrew7610 wrote: I used to work with a guy who, if he had to reply to an email, would do so very promptly, but would only use one of the three following messages:

                                      1. Yes
                                      2. No
                                      or
                                      3. No way

                                      I wish more people were as effective with their time as he was.

                                      As for the phone thing, I change jobs every 3-6 months or so and make/receive actual phone calls with recruitment agencies on a daily basis, and cannot see any way more effective of getting results.
                                      A few years ago I worked at a company that had a very formal (although not rigidly enforced) approach to email etiquette. You were supposed to put a suffix in the mail title to give the recipient an idea as to what they were supposed to do - I can't remember all of them, but it was things liked:

                                      [FYI] (or maybe it was [NFR]?) - information only, don't bother to reply
                                      [EOM] - the entire content of the email is in the title, don't need to open it
                                      [REQ] - a request for something
                                      [ACT] - action needed

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                                        #20
                                        Work email

                                        Isn't one reason to use the telephone that you don't want things in writing?

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                                          #21
                                          Work email

                                          Very much so

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                                            #22
                                            Work email

                                            Ek weet nie wrote: I may be inadvertently annoying people in work. My first option is to pop over to their desk if they are in my building or one of the other two offices in walking distance, then phone call and finally email.
                                            People who take the trouble to come and see me in person get my undivided attention. If they are in the same building and can't be bothered to leave their desk or are so self-obsessed with how 'busy' they are then they may have to wait. And most 'phone calls to me on anything that isn't just an enquiry usually end up with me asking them to put it in an email anyway so it's on the record and I won't forget. email is great. I can't remember the last time I 'phoned someone in the same building.

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