Email mistakes you shouldn’t make

Avoid disasters with these smart email strategies

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about how to avoid a few email
mistakes that can cost you a lot of time in
the long run. Email is a relatively recent technology. Forty

(00:25):
years ago, it was confined mostly to government and academic settings.
Now it's ubiquitous, and it shapes the way we spend
our time. One study from a few years ago found
that office workers spent twenty percent of their days on email,
which is about eleven hours a week. While that might
not sound too bad, the problem is that people tend

(00:46):
to check email frequently, meaning that all other time feels
chopped up. With so much time devoted to email, you'd
think people would be better at it, but we still
make all kinds of mistakes. Today's episode is about a
few rules that can help you be a better email citizen. First,

(01:06):
be careful who you copy before you reply all or
add a new person to a thread. Look at all
the names on the email. Scroll all the way down
to the bottom of the chain to be sure that
anything being forwarded is cool. To forward to everyone listed,
Assume nothing that person your potential new clients see seed

(01:31):
might not be the client's assistant. It might be a
competing vendor who's now got all your information because you
hit reply all Oops. Or maybe someone made an edgy
joke and then the email thread got turned into something
else and then got forwarded to other folks who will
not be amused by the humor, or at least won't

(01:53):
understand the context. When in doubt, delete or start a
new email chain. Second, don't use sarcasm without alerting people.
Sarcasm and humor in general can be fun ways to
bond in person, they're also almost impossible to convey in
the written word. One study found that whether people were

(02:16):
emailing friends or strangers, the people receiving the emails were
wildly inaccurate in determining what was sarcastic and what was serious.
This can go wrong in all sorts of ways. The
person receiving your message might think you're being deliberately mean
rather than making a joke, So don't be subtle. Either

(02:36):
put in the word sarcasm or put a smiley face
next to anything that should be interpreted lightly. If emojis
don't feel right, then don't make your joke in the
first place, save it for the in person meeting, when
your comedy act is far more likely to shine. Third,
and a related point, be more positive than you think

(02:58):
is necessary. Email in general reads negatively. It's unclear why
this is. Possibly when we talk in person, we send
reassuring nonverbal cues that the relationship matters and we're not
trying to be aggressive. But these cues are completely absent
in the written form. That means that if you write

(03:20):
the way you normally talk, what you write will be
interpreted more harshly than if you're in person. So over
the years, I've learned to write the email i'd naturally send,
then go back and make it look like it came
from a happier, bubblier version of Laura. Even a short
greeting such as I hope you had a great weekend

(03:41):
tour I was so glad to hear from you can
go a long way toward making the emails seem more
positive if you don't intend to flame someone. Finally, there's
the question of when you're sending the email. The original
genius of email was that it was a synchronous communication.
I write an email at a time that works for me,

(04:03):
You read and respond at a time that works for you. Alas,
we've now devolved into a situation where email is treated
with the urgency of a phone call, but people email
with a prolificacy they never manage on a telephone In
any case, this has some important ramifications. If you're in management,

(04:23):
you should understand that anyone who reports to you will
feel like she should respond to your emails as soon
as possible. That's human nature. But maybe your email wasn't urgent.
Maybe you're emailing at ten pm because you like to
catch up on work after your kids go to bed.
You might want to save the email as a draft
and send it out at eight am. You can also

(04:46):
tell your employees that you generally don't expect them to
respond at odd hours. You'll call if you need them.
This respect for boundaries means you'll have employees who are
happier and more recharged. So how will you be more
careful with your emails? It's worth the time to think
it through. When we talk, the words are generally gone,

(05:09):
but an email can last forever. Best to get it
right in the meantime. This is Laura, Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody.
I'd love to hear from you. You can send me

(05:30):
your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod
that's B the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
podcast at iHeart media dot com that Before Breakfast is

(05:51):
spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I
look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.