Email has become the dominant form of communication, and we’re all overwhelmed by it. And as email has evolved, our tools and behaviors around email have changed. The tips that can best help us manage the email BEAST are different too. We used to send and receive messages. Now many email clients, like Gmail, organize those messages into conversations and threads. Yay! And now we have so many conversation and threads, that we nee to organize those. BOO! We need new email best practices, and we need them now. Fortunately, it’s now.
Now you have to manage your subject lines as a major source of organization.
Keep Your Subject Lines Consistent
Most email programs decide what belongs in a thread by the subject line. Stick to the same wording when writing subject lines within one thread.
Europa was helping plan Bernice and Melvin’s wedding! They finally had a date set, and the communication lines were open with a florist, the staff, caterers and a photographer. Grandma Cuddles offered to staff the event with hundreds of little tots dressed as waiters. How cute, and totally ethical!
Grandma Cuddles used the subject line “Kiddies” to discuss the labor arrangements. And while Europa wasn’t a huge fan of having explicit evidence in the subject line of their back and forth, she decided to keep it in there. Any word she removed from the header would have lost an email from the thread, and she didn’t want that. She might agree to something in Grandma Cuddle’s staffing proposal that she REALLY didn’t want…
But keeping subject lines consistent by thread only solves keeping one thread together. Bernice and Europa have many threads going at once, all that need to be organized. And they need a way to do it.
Put Tags in Subject Lines
Organize conversations by tagging subject lines. Tag a subject by putting a word in the subject line that serves as the tag. I like to put the tag as a hashtag at the end of the subject line. Of course, you need to determine a convention for tagging the subject lines.
You can tag subject lines by the project you're working on. In Europa’s case, she can tag the photographer’s stream of emails with #photographer at the end of each subject line. She tags the florist conversations with #flowers in the subject lines. Then, she can just search her inbox for #photographer to get all photographer-related messages. You can also tag based on the actions that need to be taken. For example, if the table layout needs to be determined, that project involves the photographer, the florist, and the architect. You can tag those messages with #layout. Then when you or any project members need to review what’s happening with the table layout, it’s just a simple search for #layout.
We need new email best practices, and we need them now. Fortunately, it’s now.
Finally, your workgroup can design tags that you agree to use between yourselves. These might correspond to certain types of issues, negotiations under way or whatever. This depends on what kind of work you do.
Europa is working on the wedding, where she’s agreed on certain tags with all the vendors. But never content to monotask, she’s also working on staffing a secret attempt to expand the Easter Bloc into Europe. After a few emails were mistakenly sent to the florist about heavy anti-aircraft artillery, Europa realized she needed to separate things out a little. She had all the folks from the wedding tag their emails with #Wedding, and her, er, contacts… in the Bloc tag theirs with #goEurope.
Interestingly, Intern MG is spending his next semester in Amsterdam. I’m sure there’s no connection, right?
Reply to the Same Email Thread
Some people lose email. I’m sure you would never do that, but some people do. You need to remind them of a conversation tactfully.
Do this by replying to the same email thread. That will bump the conversation to the top of their inbox in most email programs. In some email programs, you can reply to the last message you received OR sent in a thread, and it will send your response to anyone else in the thread. In other email programs, however, you have to respond to a message sent by the OTHER person. If you respond to a message you sent, it will just reply back to you. Which isn’t very useful. And if you have a program that does that, well, you’ll have to find the other person’s most recent message.
Bernice wants brick oven pizza for the reception. And Europa hasn’t heard back from Grandma Cuddles yet about whether the young workers are amenable to kitchen working conditions. Rather than sending a separate message, like “what’s up with the heat tolerant kiddies?” Europa does a REPLY to the existing conversation with Grandma Cuddles to bump the email to the top of her inbox. This is especially good since Grandma Cuddles isn’t exactly the sharpest bayonet in the infantry. Speaking of bayonets, let’s just say that she thinks mice are rodents to be eradicated. They’re something you stab, not something you “click.”
When you’re done with a conversation, you still want it organized so you can find it later. But your existing conversation may have a non-obvious subject line that you’ll forget a month from now. Does “Kiddies” refer to the labor arrangements, or the ring bearers? It’s an important distinction. Even the Department of Child Services think so.
Forward a Message with a Bad Subject Line Back to Yourself
When it’s time to archive a thread, forward a message in the thread back to yourself with a new and improved headline like, “Economy-level waitstaff arrangements” or “Ring-bearer arrangements.” Then later, you search for the phrase that makes sense to you. It will pull up the forwarded message, which contains the original non-intuitive subject line. Then you can search for that subject line and recall the original conversation easily.
Europa had found the perfect system for coordinating the wedding. She organizes individual emails with consistent subject lines. She organizes threads with tags that let her quickly identify projects. She’s able to keep her plans to expand the Eastern Bloc separate from the florist’s confused requests for clarification on what a Soviet Executor-class Star Dreadnought Ion Cannon is. And Grandma Cuddles said the little tykes are quite hardy, and can happily carry heavy objects when in close proximity to a 600-degree pizza furnace. Her archives are categorized with meaningful subject lines. Now all she needed to do was pull the trigger! Wedding, domination, here she comes
This is Stever Robbins. Email questions to getitdone@quickanddirtytips.com. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run webinars and other programs to help people be Extraordinarily Productive, and build extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit http://SteverRobbins.com
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