To think everyone who uses email in their work should learn how to manage it effectively?

[FireworksAndSparklers]

I'm so tired of colleagues and managers never replying to emails until days (sometimes weeks) later, usually with the excuse that they have hundreds of unread emails backed up.

I just think there's no need for it. Find a strategy that works for you and do it. Don't just let your emails back up without dealing with them. It's rude and it's counter-productive for both your own efficiency and that of the people you work with.

I know my own strategy wouldn't work for everyone, but I would never just ignore an important part of my work because I haven't taken the time to figure out a system for managing it.

AIBU or is it ok to just let your emails build up and up and leave correspondents hanging for ever for responses?

My FIL was horrified that I don’t file my emails or delete them from my inbox (excluding spam). He has all of retirement projects neatly categorised. My reply was that he doesn’t get the volume of emails I get.

I check my email first thing, skim them, delete any spam, flag everything I need to read/deal with, and do anything urgent. Do the same throughout the day. When I have gaps between meetings, deal with the flagged items. Everything gets a reply/action within 3 days, usually quicker. I also get lots of teams messages. I don’t like it when people use them for things that should rightly go in an email. Teams messages are for short questions/immediate, not a document I will comment on later and that they have probably forgotten to give me access to.

Large amounts of emails feature in many jobs. But for many jobs, the vast majority of them are not at all important, and the job can only be done successfully if most are ignored. This is baked into many work situations.

^This.

I think it’s a bigger organisational issue. And it’s been made worse by Teams. Whilst I like it in a lot of ways if someone sends me a Teams message it (a) feels most urgent and (b) I haven’t worked out a way to deal with them (with emails I have a system of categories, to do list, and also leaving unread until I have time to deal or flagging).

We have teams channels as well as chat and it’s such hard work keeping up.

@Eightfour there are shit people in every organisation. That's what good systems and processes are there to design out. I also work for what's considered a world leading organisation and it is great at many things. Reducing unnecessary and pointless emails is not one of them.

I agree with the general sentiment that it’s rude and unprofessional to let emails go unanswered for days or weeks on end. I don’t think that’s a sustainable position if you are in any client of public facing role.

But I take issue with the idea that all email traffic can be effectively managed and categorised on a daily basis. The notion of staying on top of your inbox is a bit of a canard.

I get upwards of 300-400 emails a day. These fall into several categories:

• urgent stuff from clients or bosses which need to be responded to within an hour
• less time sensitive but nevertheless important emails from bosses or clients for things needed a few days hence
• internal traffic from various colleagues most of which take the form of a placemarking “Can you pick up x?” Or “I’m on the case” email
• Industry intel of variable relevance
• diary related stuff (can you meet at x time)
• Speculative approaches for meetings/sales pitches
• Spam

With the best will in the world I simply do not have time to categorise and index all this stuff. My diary secretary manages the diary stuff and I flag urgent items and delegate where possible. As much as possible gets deleted. All goes into a list of actions.

But there comes a point at which creating and using systems designed to free up time and improve productivity becomes a drain on effectiveness because it takes you away from the urgent stuff and bogs you down in process for the sake of process. At a certain level of seniority this activity actually makes you less productive not more.

I applaud the idea of systematising emails but if you are really busy the bottom line is that there’s quite a lot of serendipity and some things have to be filed as “fuck it I’ll get to this later”.

I will email again later and copy in my boss because how else can you force someone to do their bloody job

😆

Don't forget to CC in their line manager, their line manager's line manager, the COO's PA and the COO themselves as well. At best, you'll be ignored by them as well, but there's also a good chance that you'll be regarded as the one who wastes everybody's time in adding to the static interference in their inbox by copying them into everything and they pay even less attention to your missives.

The one that pisses me off is people who arrange a lot of meetings, and don’t know how to use the Outlook calendar properly. It’s really not hard when you’re putting in a daily meeting to deselect Saturday and Sunday from the recurrence.

I have excellent time management and more importantly, prioritisation skills. So if I read an email and decide it needs an urgent response it gets one. Otherwise it waits until a suitable time to deal with it. That doesn't mean I waste my time on "quick wins" either, because if they aren't urgent or important then it isn't an efficient use of my time regardless of how long they take to deal with.

I assume other people work in a similar way and understand that just because you personally see something as priority, that doesn't make it so.

Ah yes, the passive aggressive copying in of the boss! Always one to win hearts and minds and get the other person to reply!! Much better than having an adult conversation with the person.......

I get 150 or so a day? I just ignore the ones that aren't important to me. Maybe people feel that your emails aren't important.

I have a system, but I still don't get time to respond to everything in a timely fashion. This week is half term, so it's a "quiet" week. On Tuesday this week I received 54 emails. Some of which I was just copied in to for information, so might have taken mere seconds to skim through. Some were quick responses, so a minute or two to reply. Others required a quick reaction to check something, maybe 4 or 5 minutes each. Others required a longer amount of time to consider and formulate a reply, or a number of emails relate to a specific task. In this case, 3 or 4 emails also effectively included two telephone calls and varied responses - this probably took an hour of my time.

Dealing with emails alone must have taken up 4-5 hours of my day. I start each day with a "to do" list of my "normal" work, which I don't often even get around to starting until around 3pm.

Sometimes there really aren't just enough hours in the day.

If I can't reply to something, I do try and send a "I'm tied up at the moment, but I'll come back to you as soon as I can", then either flag it or leave it on unread as a reminder, but sometimes there's just not enough time to even do that and after a 10 hour day in the office I am just ready to go home.

I do agree in principal OP, but sometimes it's not that easy!

That’s fine, at least when we lose thousands in fees from a disgruntled client I can shrug and say I tried.

How do you suggest I do that? Travel 100 miles and pin her down at her desk to ask her to do her job?

I hear you OP and I see it all the time.

I had to recently help a Partner at work clear down his inbox. He had over 15k emails in his inbox. I cleared that down to 8k over a week.

People do work in different ways, but we try to teach our trainees and NQs the "productivity ninja" course to prevent them ending up with 15k emails in their inbox!

Who cares?

There is a lot of desire here to police other people from a judgemental standpoint, as though having x emails is innately wrong. It really isn't. Priorities are contextual. Trying to impose your own sense of moral order/workplace hygiene on other people, particularly where they are accountable for, and juggling, much trickier and demanding stuff than you, is a bit bonkers.

This isn't to say you shouldn't have an adult conversation if there are adverse impacts on you, but you cannot demand other people work as though they didn't have the other obligations they are charged with, but whch you are not subject to.

Let's be honest, people progress up hierarchies becuase they can embrace risk, face overwhelming challenge, and still make good calls, not becuase they have neat inboxes.

Sorry, that was typotastic.

When I start work I go through emails from the day before. Reply to any straight away that can have a one or two sentence quick answer then prioritise them depending on the content.

Wholeheartedly agree with you OP.

You could request that your organisation acquires a ticket system like the ones used by helpdesks instead of having processes that rely on email. If they won't do that, they should use shared mailboxes for critical workflows.

For all you know, the colleague is off sick. A ticket system or shared mailbox would allow her colleagues to see your request that is currently in her inbox, and answer it if they are able to.

Emailing a request to an individual's mailbox turns the recipient into a single point of failure for your workflow. CCing someone else clogs the CCed persons mailbox. You can't work effectively with emails to individuals in your workflow.

I do triage but my role is advisory and often the email responses have to be both legally accurate and instructive. In that context a quick response is not possible. I find it frustrating that colleagues think you can satisfy their query with a one line response so that essentially they can be let off the hook, all the while knowing I can't reply quickly if the situation needs contemplating before advice. My DH's work in Architecture is the same, the emails and attachments are legally binding so cannot be rushed despite the sender hassling you. So I think it depends what the context is.

You can stop all the pointless emails even reaching your inbox with a few rules - just send them straight to delete or an archive folder and you won't have to wade through them.

Not all jobs or workloads are the same, in a previous role I barely had time to breathe so was much more disorganised.

Where I am now, I've had plenty of time to set up my email filing system, I use rules, categories, folders, quick steps and flags to organise my emails as quick as I can. I like an empty inbox but a To Do folder with emails which are categorised and flagged with task reminders. Everything done is filed or archived.

I have the same problem as you OP where I am not receiving replies promptly, we use whatsapp for quick questions or requests. This works much better for us as the others are often away from their desks.

YABU I'd love to be on top of my emails, but I receive between 100 - 200 a day and am often in meetings all day. Plus I have my work to do!

You sound very judgey. There's lots of reasons why people may not manage emails in exactly he way you think yet should:

1. Your emails may not be the important when considering their other priorities

1. It may not be something they are particularly good at. I am sure these same people have skills you do not. People have different skillsets.

1. It could be because of a disability that causes executive dysfunction or a visual or visual processing disability, making email very difficult to manage. Your colleagues may not have chosen to share this with you so you may be unaware and they should not feel that they have you do so.

Just for three alone you are being vvv unreasonable. Stop worrying about what others are doing and focus on your own work. If there's an email you really need a response to, you could go over and speak to someone or give them a call to find out when they can get to it or to find out what you need.

Personally I think emails are a bloody scourge and we should try to minimise how many people are having to deal with.