On Email Disclaimers

On whether to create email disclaimers that have:

no qualms about indulging in the more obnoxious trademarks of legalese, including but not limited to (i) the phrase “including but not limited to”, (ii) the use of “said” as an adjective, (iii) re-naming conventions that have little to no basis in vernacular English and, regardless, never actually recur (hereinafter referred to as “the 1980 Atlanta Falcons”), (iv) redundant, tedious, and superfluous repetition of synonymous terms . . .

The whole thing is hilarious and spot on.  I think I'm going to remove said disclaimer right now.

(Via Ben Brooks)

An Overflowing Inbox Is Not A Kanban System

From David Allen (no link available):

It is a residue from the industrial and agricultural world, I think, when the things to be done were much more physically self-evident. The "piles" in most offices nowadays seem just meager attempts to reproduce the self-evidence of the crops, the machinery, the things to be made and moved of bygone times. But self-evidence is not forthcoming without more discrete focus and more self-directed thinking.

From a lean perspective, I think what people are looking for is a kanban system and visual controls to manage their work in the office. When the inbox starts to overflow, time to sort through it. When the mailbox gets overloaded with email, and the anxiety level gets high enough, time to scan the messages.

But these are emotional rather than rational cues.

Better to have cues built on an optimal worklow.  This means emptying all the buckets on a daily basis, and using your organizational system to cue when to take action on items. Get the mailbox down to zero three times daily, even if this means putting some of those emails in an @Action folder, until you have time to fully process them. Then cue up the work based on deadlines (i.e. customer demand) and maintaining continuous flow.

Overflowing buckets also indicate excessive inventory and poor processes. Time to rework your system.

And your inbox usually operates as a push system, rather than a pull system.

The point here is to use real cues instead of the artifical and misleading physical cues that emerge in an office environment.  The height of paper stacked on your credenza doesn't (or shouldn't) tell you what to do and when to do it.

Ninja Email Laws

Time Management Ninja offers “9 Laws for Work Email.” They're all worth checking out. My favorite is "Keep it Short," with the suggestion that all emails be less than five lines long. But I particularly like this insight:

Do not expect an immediate response – In our hyper connected world, email is the new snail mail. Once upon a time, email was considered fast. Wanted a quick response? Send an email. But it has since been demoted down the communication response priority list. If you need a more immediate response: call, text, or come see me. Many people check email only 2-3 times a day and are turning off their work email on breaks and weekends.

It's just impossible for busy people to reply quickly anymore. Handhelds aren't the solution, and by contributing to the volume of sent email, arguably they're part of the problem. And constant checking and responding to emails is poor workflow. If you need an immediate response, better choose a different medium.

If you find these rules useful, be sure to visit Merlin Mann's series of posts on email best practices.

D. Mark Jackson

Capture Clearinghouse

With the explosion of iPhone apps, note taking applications, and digital dictation software, there is (maybe literally) a million ways to capture ideas. Too many. A fundamental principle of GTD is to have a good system for capturing ideas whenever and wherever they occur. You don't have to capture much -- just enough to recall the idea later for full processing.

The problem with having so many capturing tools available is that they scatter your information, when the whole point is to ensure your ideas get timely developed and not lost in the wave of oncoming information.

How do you corral your information if it's spread across separate applications for entering time, recording expenses, managing tasks, and capturing everyday notes?

My solution is to make my Microsoft Outlook inbox the clearinghouse for almost every input. During my daily mailbox reviews, I translate these captured thoughts into projects, transfer information to lists, add to project support material folders, or otherwise appropriately process it.

I recommend making every one of your capturing devices point back to your email inbox. For example:

• Blind copy yourself on emails so you can follow up on assignments (Waiting Fors)

• Email yourself text notes from your handheld

• Use ReQall or Jott to email yourself audio notes

• Use Google Voice to transcribe voicemails and send them to your inbox

• Email yourself URLs from websites for further browsing

• When away from your desk, write a time entry in an email to yourself from your handheld

• Forward emails from other email accounts if they require action

• Email yourself notes from Evernote or other note taking applications, if they require follow up

• Record digital messages and immediately email them to yourself (or use Dragon Dictation to transcribe from your handheld)

Of course, using your Outlook inbox as a clearinghouse makes the most sense if you use Outlook as your list tool. For example, I customize Outlook for managing my projects list, next action lists, and reference lists. If you use some other application to manage your lists, you should make that application your clearinghouse instead.

There's also a few key inputs that don't go directly to my inbox, such as notes on my legal pad. I also collect pieces of paper, such as receipts and business cards, which need follow up. For these items, I make sure to process them during my weekly review.

But for day-to-day capturing, my inbox is it.

D. Mark Jackson

Spring Clean Your Mailbox

I'm not immune from Exchange server warnings that my mailbox is approaching the limit. Time to clean it out again.

This is the checklist I follow to get it done:

Mailbox Checklist

I realize some of these folders need an explanation, something I promise to write about soon.

With the exception of the last two items, the list is in ascending order of difficulty and descending order of payoff. That way, I can still get things down to size quickly, even if I don't make it all the way through the list.

I consider this a critical part of my personal 5S program.

On a related note, our technology team thought hard about the appropriate limit for mailbox sizes. If the limit is too low, users end up saving almost everything as a PST. This creates records management and backup issues. And IT should be solving problems, not passing them along to users.

But if the limit is too high, we end up saving too much data on the Exchange server and users feel little pressure to manage their email -- until, that is, it gets really out of hand.

And limits are relative. A heavy email user runs up against the limits sooner.

We decided on 750 MB per user, with warnings beginning at 600 MB.

I get between 100 and 300 email messages daily. I also use Tasks and Calendar extensively. I don't store any documents in my mailbox, except attachments, and I try to keep those kinds of saved messages to a minimum. Keeping my mailbox below 600 MB feels about right, and a well organized mailbox runs around 300 MB to 400 MB. Although I regularly manage my inbox, the upper limit provides some incentive to clean out less frequently used folders, such as my junk e-mail folder and rule storage folders.

It's actually helpful to have this reminder that storage isn't infinite (yet).

D. Mark Jackson

Don't E-Disagree

Here's what Don Lents, chairman of Bryan Cave, has to say about electronic communications versus business travel:

“You should never engage in a disagreement electronically,” Mr. Lents said he advises [lawyers at his firm]. “If you are going to disagree with somebody, you certainly don’t want to do it by e-mail, and if possible you don’t even want to do it by phone. You want to do it face to face.”

...

“That’s an important message that does not necessarily come naturally to a lot of younger people today who have grown up with so much of their communications being by texting and e-mail,” he said. “I tell our younger lawyers, if you think you are going to have a difficult interaction with a colleague or a client, if you can do it face to face that’s better, because you can read the body language and other social signals.”

“In texting and e-mails or even videoconferencing, you can’t always gauge the reaction and sometimes things can have a tendency to be misunderstood, or they can ratchet up to a level of seriousness that you didn’t anticipate,” he added. “In person, you see that somebody reacting in a way that you didn’t expect. Then you can stop and figure out what’s going on, and adapt.”

Genchi genbutsu in action. Human interaction is so complex and dependent on subtle cues. Especially when two people disagree. I can't think of a context where it is more important to go see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation.

D. Mark Jackson

Email Poka Yoke

Judge Gerald Lebovits has an excellent article on email for lawyers in the New York State Bar Association Journal. It's comprehensive. My favorite tip is this:

Fill in the address box only when you’re ready to send. The ease of sending out mass e-mail, purposely or inadvertently, means that you must take care when addressing your message. To avoid sending an e-mail before you’re ready, write your entire e-mail, do all your edits, and proofread before you fill in the address box.

This is a nice example of poka yoke.  The process helps the writer to stop and think, minimizing potential errors when composing the body of the message. It also clears the mind before selecting the recipient, making it more likely to be the correct choice between sometimes similar contacts.  And for lawyers, this can be a critical choice, to wit.

In addition, I frequently add my signature to an email only after completely editing it, especially important correspondence. It forces me to be sure I really want to associate my name with what I wrote.

D. Mark Jackson